Reading for Realism: The History of a U.S. Literary Institution, 1850-1910Duke University Press, 1997 - 373 Seiten Reading for Realism presents a new approach to U.S. literary history that is based on the analysis of dominant reading practices rather than on the production of texts. Nancy Glazener's focus is the realist novel, the most influential literary form of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--a form she contends was only made possible by changes in the expectations of readers about pleasure and literary value. By tracing readers' collaboration in the production of literary forms, Reading for Realism turns nineteenth-century controversies about the realist, romance, and sentimental novels into episodes in the history of readership. It also shows how works of fiction by Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and others participated in the debates about literary classification and reading that, in turn, created and shaped their audiences. Combining reception theory with a materialist analysis of the social formations in which realist reading practices circulated, Glazener's study reveals the elitist underpinnings of literary realism. At the book's center is the Atlantic group of magazines, whose influence was part of the cultural machinery of the Northeastern urban bourgeoisie and crucial to the development of literary realism in America. Glazener shows how the promotion of realism by this group of publications also meant a consolidation of privilege--primarily in terms of class, gender, race, and region--for the audience it served. Thus American realism, so often portrayed as a quintessentially populist form, actually served to enforce existing structures of class and power. |
Inhalt
High Realism and Other Bourgeois Institutions | 20 |
The Grand Reservoir of National Prosperity | 51 |
3 | 93 |
Urheberrecht | |
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Reading for Realism: The History of a U.S. Literary Institution, 1850-1910 Nancy Glazener Eingeschränkte Leseprobe - 1997 |
Reading for Realism: The History of a U. S. Literary Institution, 1850-1910 Nancy Glazener Keine Leseprobe verfügbar - 2012 |
Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
addiction American American Literature analysis Arena artistic Atlantic group authors Boston called Cambridge century chapter character Chicago common consider construction critics cultural discussion distinction domestic early economic effects elite emergence emotional England especially essay establishment example fact Faun fiction Fields figures function George Hawthorne Hawthorne's helped Henry History Howells idea ideal identified imagined important individual institutions intellectual interest issue Italy James John kind labor late literary literature London magazines Marble marked means moral nature nineteenth nineteenth-century novel particular periodicals pleasure political populations position possible practices present Press privileged produced professional promotion published readers reading realism regionalism regionalist relations relationship representation represented responses Review rhetoric romance rural seems sense sentimentalism sexual social story suggests taste term texts tion tradition Turn United Univ universities women writing York