19th century american novel

Gregg Crane0521843251, 9780521843256, 9780511480300

Stowe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain: these are just a few of the world-class novelists of nineteenth-century America. The nineteenth-century American novel was a highly fluid form, constantly evolving in response to the turbulent events of the period and emerging as a key component in American identity, growth, expansion and the Civil War. Gregg Crane tells the story of the American novel from its beginnings in the early republic to the end of the nineteenth century. Treating the famous and many less well-known works, Crane discusses the genre’s major figures, themes and developments. He analyses the different types of American fiction – romance, sentimental fiction, and the realist novel – in detail, while the historical context is explained in relation to how novelists explored the changing world around them. This comprehensive and stimulating introduction will enhance students’ experience of reading and studying the whole canon of American fiction.

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Table of contents :
Cover……Page 1
Half-title……Page 3
Series-title……Page 4
Title……Page 5
Copyright……Page 6
Contents……Page 9
Acknowledgments……Page 11
Introduction……Page 13
The early American novel……Page 18
What is the romance?……Page 38
The historical romance……Page 44
The frontier romance……Page 50
The plantation idyll: a romance of the Old South, slavery, and race……Page 64
The romance of race and republicanism……Page 72
The philosophical romance: Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville……Page 79
Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838)……Page 85
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)……Page 91
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale (1851)……Page 98
The sensational romance – a taste for excess……Page 106
What is the sentimental novel?……Page 115
Susan Warner, The Wide, Wide World (1850)……Page 125
Maria Cummins, The Lamplighter (1854)……Page 130
Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall (1855)……Page 133
Sentiment and reform: Uncle Tom’s Cabin……Page 137
Sentiment and the argument against reform: The Planter’s Northern Bride……Page 148
Sentiment, upward mobility, and the African American novel……Page 152
Moving toward realism: Rebecca Harding Davis and Elizabeth Stoddard……Page 160
What is American literary realism?……Page 167
Realist technique and subject matter……Page 176
Degrees of transparency: Howells and James……Page 190
From agency to determinism – a sliding scale……Page 198
Jewett’s A Country Doctor – free will with limits……Page 202
From Huckleberry Finn to Pudd’nhead Wilson – Twain’s increasing fatalism……Page 204
Freedom from thought – life without agency……Page 209
The taste for excess – sensationalism redux……Page 215
Introduction……Page 220
1 The romance……Page 223
2 The sentimental novel……Page 226
3 The realist novel……Page 229
Works cited……Page 232
Index……Page 243