Do the Americas Have a Common Literature?

Do the Americas Have a Common Literature?
Author: Gustavo Pérez Firmat
Publisher: Durham : Duke University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 1990
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

In contrast to traditional criticism which tends to examine World counterparts, the essays in this collection identify a distinctive pan-American consciousness (and literary idiom), engaging not only the major North American and Spanish American writers, but also such literatures as the Chicano, African-American, Brazilian, and Quebecois. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Do the Americas Have a Common Literature?

Do the Americas Have a Common Literature?
Author: Gustavo Pérez Firmat
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 412
Release: 1990
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780822310723

This volume takes an important step toward the discovery of a common critical heritage that joins the diverse literatures of North America and Latin America. Traditionally, literary criticism has treated the literature of the Americas as "New World" literature, examining it in relation to its "Old World"--usually European--counterparts. This collection of essays redirects the Eurocentric focus of earlier scholarship and identifies a distinctive pan-American consciousness. The essays here place the literature of the Americas in a hemispheric context by drawing on approaches derived from various schools of contemporary critical thought--Marxism, feminism, culture studies, semiotics, reception aesthetics, and poststructuralism. As part of their search for a distinctly New World literary idiom, the contributors engage not only the major North American and Spanish American writers, but also such "marginal" or "minor" literatures as Chicano, African American, Brazilian, and Québecois. In identifying areas of agreement and confluence, this work lays the groundwork for finding historical, ideological, and cultural homogeneity in the imaginative writing of the Americas. Contributors. Lois Parkinson Zamora, David T. Haberly, José David Saldívar, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, José Piedra, Doris Sommer, Enrico Mario Santí, Eduardo González, John Irwin, Wendy B. Faris, René Prieto, Jonathan Monroe, Gustavo Pérez Firmat

A New Literary History of America

A New Literary History of America
Author: Greil Marcus
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 1129
Release: 2010-01-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0674265815

America is a nation making itself up as it goes along—a story of discovery and invention unfolding in speeches and images, letters and poetry, unprecedented feats of scholarship and imagination. In these myriad, multiform, endlessly changing expressions of the American experience, the authors and editors of this volume find a new American history. In more than two hundred original essays, A New Literary History of America brings together the nation’s many voices. From the first conception of a New World in the sixteenth century to the latest re-envisioning of that world in cartoons, television, science fiction, and hip hop, the book gives us a new, kaleidoscopic view of what “Made in America” means. Literature, music, film, art, history, science, philosophy, political rhetoric—cultural creations of every kind appear in relation to each other, and to the time and place that give them shape. The meeting of minds is extraordinary as T. J. Clark writes on Jackson Pollock, Paul Muldoon on Carl Sandburg, Camille Paglia on Tennessee Williams, Sarah Vowell on Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Walter Mosley on hard-boiled detective fiction, Jonathan Lethem on Thomas Edison, Gerald Early on Tarzan, Bharati Mukherjee on The Scarlet Letter, Gish Jen on Catcher in the Rye, and Ishmael Reed on Huckleberry Finn. From Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop to Philip Roth and Toni Morrison, from Alexander Graham Bell and Stephen Foster to Alcoholics Anonymous, Life, Chuck Berry, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ronald Reagan, this is America singing, celebrating itself, and becoming something altogether different, plural, singular, new.

Periodical Literature in Eighteenth-century America

Periodical Literature in Eighteenth-century America
Author: Mark Kamrath
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781572333192

Similar to the "digital revolution" of the last century, the colonial and early national periods were a time of improved print technologies, exploding information, faster communications, and a fundamental reinventing of publishing and media processes. Between the early 1700s, when periodical publications struggled, and the late 1790s, when print media surged ahead, print culture was radically transformed by a liberal market economy, innovative printing and papermaking techniques, improved distribution processes, and higher literacy rates, meaning that information, particularly in the form of newspapers and magazines, was available more quickly and widely to people than ever before. These changes generated new literary genres and new relationships between authors and their audiences. The study of periodical literature and print culture in the eighteenth century has provided a more intimate view into the lives and tastes of early Americans, as well as enabled researchers to further investigate a plethora of subjects and discourses having to do with the Atlantic world and the formation of an American republic. Periodical Literature in Eighteenth-Century America is a collection of essays that delves into many of these unique magazines and newspapers and their intersections as print media, as well as into what these publications reveal about the cultural, ideological, and literary issues of the period; the resulting research is interdisciplinary, combining the fields of history, literature, and cultural studies. The essays explore many evolving issues in an emerging America: scientific inquiry, race, ethnicity, gender, and religious belief all found voice in various early periodicals. The differences between the pre- and post-Revolutionary periodicals and performativity are discussed, as are vital immigration, class, and settlement issues. Political topics, such as the emergence of democratic institutions and dissent, the formation of early parties, and the development of regional, national, and transnational cultural identities are also covered. Using digital databases and recent poststructural and cultural theories, this book returns us to the periodicals archive and regenerates the ideological and discursive landscape of early American literature in provocative ways; it will be of value to anyone interested in the crosscurrents of early American history, book history, and cultural studies. Mark L. Kamrath is associate professor of English at the University of Central Florida. Sharon M. Harris is Lorraine Sherley Professor of Literature at Texas Christian University.

Approaches to American Cultural Studies

Approaches to American Cultural Studies
Author: Antje Dallmann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2016-05-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317227743

Approaches to American Cultural Studies provides an accessible yet comprehensive overview of the diverse range of subjects encompassed within American Studies, familiarising students with the history and shape of American Studies as an academic subject as well as its key theories, methods, and concepts. Written and edited by an international team of authors based primarily in Europe, the book is divided into four thematically-organised sections. The first part delineates the evolution of American Studies over the course of the twentieth century, the second elaborates on how American Studies as a field is positioned within the wider humanities, and the third inspects and deconstructs popular tropes such as myths of the West, the self-made man, Manifest Destiny, and representations of the President of the United States. The fourth part introduces theories of society such as structuralism and deconstruction, queer and transgender theories, border and hemispheric studies, and critical race theory that are particularly influential within American Studies. This book is supplemented by a companion website offering further material for study (www.routledge.com/cw/dallmann). Specifically designed for use on courses across Europe, it is a clear and engaging introductory text for students of American culture.

South to A New Place

South to A New Place
Author: Suzanne W. Jones
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2002-11-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780807128404

Taking Albert Murray’s South to a Very Old Place as a starting point, contributors to this exciting collection continue the work of critically and creatively remapping the South through their freewheeling studies of southern literature and culture. Appraising representations of the South within a context that is postmodern, diverse, widely inclusive, and international, the essays present multiple ways of imagining the South and examine both new places and old landscapes in an attempt to tie the mythic southern balloon down to earth. In his foreword, an insightful discussion of numerous Souths and the ways they are perceived, Richard Gray explains one of the key goals of the book: to open up to scrutiny the literary and cultural practice that has come to be known as “regionalism.” Part I, “Surveying the Territory,” theorizes definitions of place and region, and includes an analysis of southern literary regionalism from the 1930s to the present and an exploration of southern popular culture. In “Mapping the Region,” essayists examine different representations of rural landscapes and small towns, cities and suburbs, as well as liminal zones in which new immigrants make their homes. Reflecting the contributors’ transatlantic perspective, “Making Global Connections” challenges notions of southern distinctiveness by reading the region through the comparative frameworks of Southern Italy, East Germany, Latin America, and the United Kingdom and via a range of texts and contexts—from early reconciliation romances to Faulkner’s fictions about race to the more recent parody of southern mythmaking, Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone. Together, these essays explore the roles that economic, racial, and ideological tensions have played in the formation of southern identity through varying representations of locality, moving regionalism toward a “new place” in southern studies.

The American 1930s

The American 1930s
Author: Peter Conn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009-02-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521516404

A wholly new perspective on the literature and art of the 1930s by a leading scholar of the period.

Herbert E. Bolton and the Historiography of the Americas

Herbert E. Bolton and the Historiography of the Americas
Author: Russell Magnaghi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 238
Release: 1998-08-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 0313031762

The comparative approach to the understanding of history is increasingly popular today. This study details the evolution of comparative history by examining the career of a pioneer in this area, Herbert E. Bolton, who popularized the notion that hemispheric history should be considered from pole to pole. Bolton traced the study of the history of the Americas back to 16th century European accounts of efforts to bring civilization to the New World, and he argued that only within this larger context could the histories of individual nations be understood. After American entry into the Spanish-American War in 1898, historians such as Bolton promoted the idea of comparative history, and it remains to this day a significant historiographical approach. Consideration of the history of the Americas as a whole dates back to 16th century European treatises on the New World. Chapter one of this study provides an overview of pre-Bolton formulations of such history. In chapter two one sees the forces that shaped Bolton's thinking and brought about the development of the concept. Chapters three and four focus upon the evolution of the approach through Bolton's history course at the University of California at Berkeley and the reception of the concept among Bolton's contemporaries. Unfortunately, Bolton never fully developed the theoretical side of his arguement; thus, chapter five chronicles the decline of his ideas after his death. The final chapter reveals the survival of the concept, which is now embraced by a new generation of historians who are largely unfamiliar with Bolton's instrumental role in the promotion of comparative history.

American Literature & the Culture Wars

American Literature & the Culture Wars
Author: Gregory S. Jay
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 1997
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780801484223

Introduction: making ends meet -- The struggle for representation -- Not born on the fourth of July -- Taking multiculturalism personally -- The discipline of the syllabus -- The end of "American" literature.

Beyond Bolaño

Beyond Bolaño
Author: Héctor Hoyos
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2015-01-27
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0231538669

Through a comparative analysis of the novels of Roberto Bolaño and the fictional work of César Aira, Mario Bellatin, Diamela Eltit, Chico Buarque, Alberto Fuguet, and Fernando Vallejo, among other leading authors, Héctor Hoyos defines and explores new trends in how we read and write in a globalized era. Calling attention to fresh innovations in form, voice, perspective, and representation, he also affirms the lead role of Latin American authors in reshaping world literature. Focusing on post-1989 Latin American novels and their representation of globalization, Hoyos considers the narrative techniques and aesthetic choices Latin American authors make to assimilate the conflicting forces at work in our increasingly interconnected world. Challenging the assumption that globalization leads to cultural homogenization, he identifies the rich textual strategies that estrange and re-mediate power relations both within literary canons and across global cultural hegemonies. Hoyos shines a light on the unique, avant-garde phenomena that animate these works, such as modeling literary circuits after the dynamics of the art world, imagining counterfactual "Nazi" histories, exposing the limits of escapist narratives, and formulating textual forms that resist worldwide literary consumerism. These experiments help reconfigure received ideas about global culture and advance new, creative articulations of world consciousness.