Regional fictions : culture and identity in nineteenth-century American literature

Out of many, one--e pluribus unum--is the motto of the American nation, and it sums up neatly the paradox that Stephanie Foote so deftly identifies in Regional Fictions. Regionalism, the genre that ostensibly challenges or offers an alternative to nationalism, in fact characterizes and perhaps even defines the American sense of nationhood.
In particular, Foote argues that the colorful local characters, dialects, and accents that marked regionalist novels and short stories of the late nineteenth century were key to the genre's conversion of seemingly dangerous political differences--such as those posed by disaffected Midwestern farmers or recalcitrant foreign nationals--into appealing cultural differences. She asserts that many of the most treasured beliefs about the value of local identities still held in the United States today are traceable to the discourses of this regional fiction, and she illustrates her contentions with insightful examinations of the work of Sarah Orne Jewett, Hamlin Garland, Gertrude Atherton, George Washington Cable, Jacob Riis, and others. Broadening the definitions of regional writing and its imaginative territory, Regional Fictions moves beyond literary criticism to comment on the ideology of national, local, ethnic, and racial identity.

Choice 评论

Foote's volume joins a growing list of works concerned with 19th-century regionalist fiction, the most recent of which is Kate McCullough's Regions of Identity: The Construction of America in Women's Fiction, 1885-1914 (CH, Nov'99). Unlike many previous scholars, Foote (Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) avoids hypothesizing about the cultural effects of regionalist fictions, preferring instead to focus on the intentions of the authors and texts she examines. She contends that regionalist authors and fictions were attempting to imagine ways in which regional, ethnic, and racial "others" could be included in a single nation, but that they did not always succeed. Foote places less emphasis on women's gender roles than others have; however, she astutely analyzes works by such relatively neglected male authors as Hamlin Garland, Harold Frederic, George Washington Cable, and Jacob Riis. The chapter on Riis's How the Other Half Lives (1890) is especially valuable for the way it demonstrates that some works about urban regions are similar to the fictions that Foote classifies as examples of "pastoral regionalism." Poor editing makes some chapters difficult to follow, but the patient reader will appreciate this author's insights about the significance of this genre. Graduate and research collections. C. Johanningsmeier University of Nebraska at Omaha

Acknowledgments	p. vi
Introduction: What Difference Does Regional Writing Make?	p. 3
1 "I Feared to Find Myself a Foreigner": Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs	p. 17
2 The Region of the Repressed and the Return of the Region: Hamlin Garland and Harold Frederic	p. 38
3 The History of a Historyless People: Gertrude Atherton's The Californians	p. 73
4 "The Shadow of the Ethiopian": George Washington Cable's The Grandissimes	p. 98
5 Disorienting Regionalism: Jacob Riis, the City, and the Chinese Question	p. 124
6 Representation and Tammany Hall: Locating the Body Politic	p. 154
Notes	p. 183
Works Cited	p. 198
Index	p. 206

可借阅:*

链接这些题名

已订购

摘要

摘要

评论 (1)

Choice 评论

目录