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Black, White, and Huckleberry Finn This consequential book takes a hard, systematic look at the depiction of blacks, whites, and race relations in Mark Twain's classic novel, raising questions about its canonical status in American literature. Huckleberry Finn, one of the most widely taught novels in American literature, has long been the subject of ongoing debates over issues ranging from immorality to racism. Here, Elaine Mensh and Harry Mensh enter the debate with a careful and thoughtful examination of racial messages imbedded in the tale of Huck and Jim. Using as a gauge for analysis the historical record left by both slaves and slaveholders, the Menshes compare Twain's depiction with historical reality, attempting to determine where the book either undermines or upholds traditional racial attitudes. Surveying the opinions of fellow critics, they challenge the current consensus that Huckleberry Finn fosters rapport between blacks and whites, arguing that the book does not subvert ingrained beliefs about race, and demonstrating that the argument over black-white relations in the novel is also an argument over non-fictional racial relations and conflicting perceptions of racial harmony. Reading the novel in its historical context, the Menshes conclude that Twain, in the character of Huck, never questions the institution of slavery, and even supports it in both thought and action. In response to student and parent challenges to the inclusion of the book in literature classes, they suggest that it should remain in school libraries but not be required reading. Of importance to scholars of Mark Twain and American literature, African American cultural studies, or anyone interested in issues of literature and race, this book adds a strong voice to the long-ranging debate over Huckleberry Finn.  
The Cambridge Introduction to American Literary Realism Between the Civil War and the First World War, realism was the most prominent form of American fiction. Realist writers of the period include some of America's greatest, such as Henry James, Edith Wharton and Mark Twain, but also many lesser-known writers whose work still speaks to us today, for instance Charles Chesnutt, Zitkala-Sa and Sarah Orne Jewett. Emphasizing realism's historical context, this introduction traces the genre's relationship with powerful, often violent, social conflicts involving race, gender, class and national origin. It also examines how the realist style was created; the necessarily ambiguous relationship between realism produced on the page and reality outside the book; and the different, often contradictory, forms 'realism' took in literary works by different authors. The most accessible yet sophisticated account of American literary realism currently available, this volume will be of great value to students, teachers and readers of the American novel.
The Cambridge Introduction to Mark Twain Mark Twain is a central figure in nineteenth-century American literature, and his novels are among the best-known and most often studied texts in the field. This clear and incisive Introduction provides a biography of the author and situates his works in the historical and cultural context of his times. Peter Messent gives accessible but penetrating readings of the best-known writings including Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He pays particular attention to the way Twain's humour works and how it underpins his prose style. The final chapter provides up-to-date analysis of the recent critical reception of Twain's writing, and summarises the contentious and important debates about his literary and cultural position. The guide to further reading will help those who wish to extend their research and critical work on the author. This book will be of outstanding value to anyone coming to Twain for the first time.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman OC These essays exemplify all the virtues of interdisciplinarity in consideration of that most multidisciplined of writers, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The contributors simultaneously clarify and complicate our understanding of some of the more vexed areas of Gilman's work by engaging saliently with her theories of ethnicity, class, prostitution, and the dynamics of gender; posing difficult questions to contemporary feminist scholars; and providing sensitive and insightful guidance to a well-chosen and wide range of texts.OCOOCoJanet Beer, author of Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction"
Critical Insights: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn For a novel that is now frequently regarded as perhaps the greatest in all of American fiction, one of the most interesting facts about it is that such has not always been the case for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In this compilation of analyses and discussions on the critical reception, publication history, censorship, and academic merit, old themes are examined using fresh new perspectives many of which have never before been articulated in print.
Critical Insights: Edith Wharton A great starting point for students seeking an introduction to Edith Wharton and the critical discussions surrounding her work. This volume will examine a wide range of Wharton's works, from her major novels The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence to her war writings, Gothic fiction, and late works, such as The Children and The Glimpses of the Moon. It will address the relationship between Wharton and other writers, including Willa Cather, Henry James, and Charlotte Bront#65533;, and will offer fresh perspectives on Wharton's views on gender, motherhood, law, architecture, and the classical tradition. Each essay is 2,500 to 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes. Finally, the volume's appendixes offer a section of useful reference resources: A chronology of the author's life A complete list of the author's works and their original dates of publication A general bibliography A detailed paragraph on the volume's editor Notes on the individual chapter authors A subject index
Critical Insights : Henry James From the novels The Turn of the Screw and The Portrait of a Lady to his extensive literary criticism, Henry James is recognized today as one of the central novelists and proponents of 19th-century realism. Original essays in this volume analyze the importance of James? work to his contemporaries, the influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne in his writing, and his failed theatrical career.
Critical Insights: Jack London Combines biographical material with original essays comparing his career to that of Mark Twain and an examination of his critical reception. His interest in Carl Jung, Naturalism and the theme of androgyny throughout his novels are also discussed.
Critical Insights : Mark Twain Mark Twain remains one of America's most beloved literary figures. Eminently quotable, his best writing combines irreverent humor with practical good sense and deep human feeling and, perhaps more so than the work of any other author, defines what it is to be an American. His most beloved novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is a nostalgic paean to a simpler, more innocent America, one in which it is still possible to 'light out for the Territory.'
Critical insights: The Awakening This volume presents a variety of new essays on Kate Chopin's The Awakening. This classic novella, published in 1899, is considered a landmark work of early feminism. It appears in practically every anthology of American literature, and it is one of the most widely taught of all American novels. Although never technically banned, Chopin's work was strongly criticised for its depictions of female sexual desire and for featuring a protagonist who resisted social norms and traditional gender roles. This volume surveys previous criticism of the work but also offers a variety of new approaches from various critical perspectives. Essays relate the novel to such topics as race, humour, Chopin's life, impressionist painting, irony and close reading, tourism and landscapes, regionalism and naturalism, and folly and engendered discourse. Chopin's novel is compared to works by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Mark Twain, and several essays are intended to be highly accessible to students and of genuine value to teachers. Some essayists defend the novel against attacks on its artistic success and/or explain why it is worth reading at all. Contributors include such distinguished Chopin scholars as Robert Arner, Janet Beer, Thomas Bonner, Joyce Dyer, Anna Elfenbein, Bernard Koloski, Mary Papke, and Emily Toth. Rounding out the volume is a bibliography of critical sources for readers seeking to study this work in greater depth. Salem's Critical Insights series distils the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world's most-studied literature. The series focuses on an individual author's entire body of work, on single works of literature or on a literary theme. Edited and written by some of academe's most distinguished literary scholars, Critical Insights provide authoritative, in-depth scholarship suitable for students and teachers alike.
Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century The essays in Kate Chopin in the Twenty-First Century update Chopin scholarship, creating pathways, both broad and narrow, for study in a new century. Given Chopin's atypical literary career and her frequent writing about unconventional themes for her time-such as divorce, infidelity, and suicide-she may have approved such approaches as the essays here suggest. This collection of essays offers readers newer ways of thinking about Chopin's works. They break away from the familiar trends of the feminist considerations of her work, ranging from her short stories, to her lesser-known novel, At Fault, to her best-known work, The Awakening. Part one introduces interdisciplinary themes for reading culture in Chopin, including urban living and theatre as a lens for viewing New Orleans's social and class stratifications; the importance of music-a central interest of Chopin's-in her texts; and the cultural relevance of Vogue magazine, where eighteen of Chopin's stories were first published. Part two identifies important and overlapping concerns of religion, race, class, and gender within the contexts of selected short works. And part three offers fresh readings of The Awakening, using the lens of race, as well as the lens of class to reconsider protagonist Edna Pontellier's transformation and her dependency upon the rights of privilege within a specific cultural context. Together, all of the essays in the collection, by both established and newer scholars, help to usher Chopin's work into the twenty-first century.
Student Companion to Mark Twain This critical study allows students and general readers to appreciate the myriad perspectives of the man, his life, and his contributions to American literature. A fresh biographical account traces Twain's colorful life through his varied careers and adventures to his rise to national prominence as a writer of short stories, to the creation of masterpieces like Adventure of Huckleberry Finn.
War No More Until now, scholars have portrayed America's antiwar literature as an outgrowth of World War I, manifested in the works of writers such as Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos. But in War No More, Cynthia Wachtell corrects the record by tracing the steady and inexorable rise of antiwar writing in American literature from the Civil War to the eve of World War I. Beginning with an examination of three very different renderings of the chaotic Battle of Chickamauga -- a diary entry by a northern infantry officer, a poem romanticizing war authored by a young southerner a few months later, and a gruesome story penned by the veteran Ambrose Bierce -- Wachtell traces the gradual shift in the late nineteenth century away from highly idealized depictions of the Civil War. Even as the war was under way, she shows, certain writers -- including Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, John William De Forest, and Nathaniel Hawthorne -- quietly questioned the meaning and morality of the conflict. As Wachtell demonstrates, antiwar writing made steady gains in public acceptance and popularity in the final years of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth, especially during the Spanish-American War and the war in the Philippines. While much of the era's war writing continued the long tradition of glorifying battle, works by Bierce, Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, William James, and others increasingly presented war as immoral and the modernization and mechanization of combat as something to be deeply feared. Wachtell also explores, through the works of Theodore Roosevelt and others, the resistance that the antiwar impulse met. Drawing upon a wide range of published and unpublished sources, including letters, diaries, essays, poems, short stories, novels, memoirs, speeches, magazine and newspaper articles, and religious tracts, Wachtell makes strikingly clear that pacifism had never been more popular than in the years preceding World War I. War No More concludes by charting the development of antiwar literature from World War I to the present, thus offering the first comprehensive overview of one hundred and fifty years of American antiwar writing.

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn : A Case Study in Critical Controversy Hilariously picaresque, epic in scope, alive with the poetry and vigor of the American people, Mark Twain's story about a young boy and his journey down the Mississippi was the first great novel to speak in a truly American voice.
The Awakening : Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical History, and Essays The text is that of the first edition of the novel, published by Herbert S. Stone in 1899. It has been annotated by the editor and includes translations of French phrases and information about New Orleans locales, customs, and lore, the Bayou region, and Creole culture.
Bret Harte: Opening The American Literary West Bret Harte was the best-known and highest-paid writer in America in the early 1870s, yet his vexed attempts to earn a living by his pen led to the failure of his marriage and, in 1878, his departure for Europe. Gary Scharnhorst's biography of Harte traces the growing commercial appeal of western fiction and drama on both sides of the Atlantic during the Gilded Age, a development in which Harte played a crucial role.
The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin Although she enjoyed only modest success during her lifetime, Kate Chopin is now recognised as a unique voice in American literature. Her seminal novel, The Awakening, published in 1899, explored new and startling territory, and stunned readers with its frank depiction of the limits of marriage and motherhood.
Critical Essays on Constance Fenimore Woolson The full range of literary traditions comes to life in the Twayne Critical Essays Series. Volume editors have carefully selected critical essays that represent the full spectrum of controversies, trends and methodologies relating to each author's work. Essays include writings from the author's native country and abroad, with interpretations from the time they were writing, through the present day.
Critical Insights: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer holds a special place in American literature. Never out of print since its original publication in 1876 and equally beloved by both children and adults, it is one of the most widely read American novels ever published. Despite the book’s enduring popularity and its author’s fame as one of the greatest American writers, it has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. It is a difficult-to-believe but remarkable fact that Critical Insights: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is the first entirely original collection of critical analyses of the novel ever published! This volume, like all others in the Critical Insights series, is divided into several sections. It begins with an introductory “About This Volume” essay, followed by another work titled “Editorial Notes”. This is followed by “On Mark Twain and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” All three introductory pieces are written by volume editor R. Kent Rasmussen. A collection of four critical contexts essays are intended to treat the novel From a historical vantage point In terms of its critical reception Using a specific critical lens And by comparing and contrasting it with another important work. This section opens with an essay by Peter Messent titled, “Tom Sawyer’s Evasion of History,” followed by a piece by Alan Gribben, “Tom Sawyer: A Classic Overshadowed by Its Successor,” This essay discusses how The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is linked to Twain’s later classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but is often viewed by scholars and critics as a precursor to the later novel without pausing to analyze The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as its own novel. The following two articles are written by Joe B. Fulton and Philip Bader. The first, “Thinking Like Jackson’s Island; Or, Why Tom Sawyer Is Good for the Environment,” by Fulton explores the theme present in the novel that immersing oneself in the natural world creates a greater appreciation not just for the earth, but for human beings as well. In the final essay, “Tom Sawyer and Harry Potter: The Boys Who Live,” by Bader compares the two works titular boy characters and how Rowling may have been inspired by Twain, but more importantly, how each respective character continues to inspire young readers imaginations regardless of journey . Following these four Critical Context essays is the Critical Readings section of this book, which contains the following essays: The Tom Sawyer Franchise’ The Evolution (and Devolution) of a Character, by John Bird Tom Sawyer: From Boy-Book Hero to Coming-of-Age Hellion, by Kevin Mac Donnell Is Tom Sawyer and Idyllic Dream or a Boy’s Nightmare?, by K. Patrick Ober Becky Thatcher and Aunt Polly in Three Dimensions, by Linda Morris Republican Motherhood and Tom Sawyer’s Political Education, by Hannah J.D. Wells Injun Joe and Mark Twain’s Attitudes toward Native Americans, by Kerry Driscoll Tom Sawyer as an Enduring Icon of Boyhood, by John H. Davis and Hugh H. Davis Tom Sawyer’s Complicated Relationship with Mark Twain’s Hometown, by Cindy Lovell Illustrating Tom Sawyer, by Barbara Schmidt The Tom Sawyer Movie That Hollywood Got (Almost) Right, by R. Kent Rasmussen Adventuring with Tom Sawyer in a Twenty-first-Century Classroom, by John R. Pascal Each essay in Critical Insights: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer includes a list of Works Cited and detailed endnotes. In the final section, Resources, easy-to-follow lists are provided to help guide the reader through important dates and moments in the author’s life, beginning with Tom Sawyer’s Cave: Fact vs. Fiction, by Danny Norman, a Chronology of Mark Twain’s Life and Legacy. This is followed by a list of Works by Mark Twain, a Bibliography, Notable Editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Its Characters, and Illustrators of American Editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Finally, this section closes with a Filmography and About the Editor section, Contributors, and a detailed Index. The Critical Insights Series distills the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world’s most studies literature. Edited and written by some of academia’s most distinguished literary scholars, Critical Insights: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer provides authoritative, in-depth scholarship that students and researchers will rely on for years.
Henry James : The Young Master Describes James's childhood in New York in the mid-nineteenth century, his illnesses, sexual encounters, and early loves, and follows his development as a writer culminating with his masterpiece The Portrait of a Lady.
Jack London : An American Life A revelatory look at the life of the great American author--and how it shaped his most beloved works. Jack London was born a working class, fatherless Californian in 1876. In his youth, he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast--an oyster pirate, a hobo, a sailor, and a prospector by turns. He spent his brief life rapidly accumulating the experiences that would inform his acclaimed bestselling books The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf.
Jack London: A Study of the Short Fiction This study examines the works of this naturalist writer, best known for "The Call of the Wild." Producer of nearly 200 short stories, his writing ranged in topic from the Gold Rush to science fiction.
Kate Chopin: A Literary Life In a career that lasted little more than a decade, Kate Chopin became well-known for stories set in the Creole and Acadian regions of Louisiana, but her masterwork, The Awakening (1899), told the daring story of a woman who defied social and sexual conventions, eliciting negative reviews that denied Chopin prominence until the middle of the twentieth century. Kate Chopin: A Literary Life sets the author in the context of nineteenth-century American women writers to show how standards of literary propriety affected the career of a major American writer.
Mark Twain Ernest Hemingway called Huckleberry Finn the best book we've ever had. There was nothing before. There's been nothing as good since. Critical opinion of this book hasn't dimmed since Hemingway uttered these words; as author Russell Banks says in these pages, Twain makes possible an American literature which would otherwise not have been possible.
O. Henry : A Study of the Short Fiction "In the early twentieth century, William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry, captured the fancy and touched the hearts of newspaper and magazine writers throughout the United States. Interpreted as quintessentially American, O. Henry's short fiction made him the spokesman for Manhattan's "four million" during his own era. In nearly three hundred stories, O. Henry's artistry, style, and technique has been compared favorably with writers such as Conrad, Hardy, and Wharton."
Readings on Stephen Crane Best known for such works as "Red Badge of Courage" and "The Open Boat," Crane was also a poet and journalist. Although his death at a young age cut short his career, Crane's work remains important and his explorations of themes such as war.
Up From History: The Life of Booker T. Washington Since the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr., has personified black leadership with his use of direct action protests against white authority. A century ago, in the era of Jim Crow, Booker T. Washington pursued a different strategy to lift his people. In this compelling biography, Norrell reveals how conditions in the segregated South led Washington to call for a less contentious path to freedom and equality. He urged black people to acquire economic independence and to develop the moral character that would ultimately gain them full citizenship. Although widely accepted as the most realistic way to integrate blacks into American life during his time, Washington’s strategy has been disparaged since the 1960s. The first full-length biography of Booker T. in a generation, Up from History recreates the broad contexts in which Washington worked: He struggled against white bigots who hated his economic ambitions for blacks, African-American intellectuals like W. E. B. Du Bois who resented his huge influence, and such inconstant allies as Theodore Roosevelt. Norrell details the positive power of Washington’s vision, one that invoked hope and optimism to overcome past exploitation and present discrimination. Indeed, his ideas have since inspired peoples across the Third World that there are many ways to struggle for equality and justice. Up from History reinstates this extraordinary historical figure to the pantheon of black leaders, illuminating not only his mission and achievement but also, poignantly, the man himself.
W. E. B. du Bois, American Prophet Pioneering historian, sociologist, editor, novelist, poet, and organizer, W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the foremost African American intellectuals of the twentieth century. While Du Bois is remembered for his monumental contributions to scholarship and civil rights activism, the spiritual aspects of his work have been misunderstood, even negated. W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, the first religious biography of this leader, illuminates the spirituality that is essential to understanding his efforts and achievements in the political and intellectual world. Often labeled an atheist, Du Bois was in fact deeply and creatively involved with religion. Historian Edward J. Blum reveals how spirituality was central to Du Bois's approach to Marxism, pan-Africanism, and nuclear disarmament, his support for black churches, and his reckoning of the spiritual wage of white supremacy. His writings, teachings, and prayers served as articles of faith for fellow activists of his day, from student book club members to Langston Hughes. A blend of history, sociology, literary criticism, and religious reflection in the model of Du Bois's best work, W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet recasts the life of this great visionary and intellectual for a new generation of scholars and activists. Honorable Mention, 2007 Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book Awards
Wild Unrest : Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Making of "The Yellow Wall-Paper" In Wild Unrest, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz offers a vivid portrait of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the 1880s, drawing new connections between the author's life and work and illuminating the predicament of women then and now. "The Yellow Wall-Paper" captured a woman's harrowing descent into madness and drew on the author's intimate knowledge of mental illness.
Wolf : The Lives of Jack London Jack London was born a working-class, fatherless Californian in 1876. In his youth he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast--by turns playing the role of hobo, sailor, prospector, and oyster pirate. He spent his brief life rapidly accumulating the experiences that would inform his acclaimed, best-selling books: The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea Wolf.