American Writers is a book of vast scope, much like America itself. Within these pages one will find the early Puritan visionaries, leaders of the American Renaissance, realists and naturalists, the Lost Generation, the modernists, the Fugitives and agrarians, the Beats, the Black Mountain writers, postmodernists, and more. What brings them all together is the literary merit of their writing. Whether novelists, short story writers, poets, dramatists, essayists, or nonfiction writers, they are all judged by history and/or their contemporaries to be writers whose work has helped to create “American literature.” American Writers includes all the major literary genres to provide biographical profiles of writers from colonial times to the present and from all major literary movements.
Product Description: This Companion provides an original and authoritative survey of twentieth-century American drama studies, written by some of the best scholars and critics in the field. * Balances consideration of canonical material with discussion of works by previously marginalized playwrights * Includes studies of leading dramatists, such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill and Gertrude Stein * Allows readers to make new links between particular plays and playwrights * Examines the movements that framed the century, such as the Harlem Renaissance, lesbian and gay drama, and the solo performances of the 1980s and 1990s * Situates American drama within larger discussions about American ideas and culture
Product Description: Although it has long been commonplace to imagine the archetypal American poet singing a solitary "Song of Myself," much of the most enduring American poetry has actually been preoccupied with the drama of friendship. In this lucid and absorbing study, Andrew Epstein argues that an obsession with both the pleasures and problems of friendship erupts in the "New American Poetry" that emerges after the Second World War. By focusing on some of the most significant postmodernist American poets--the "New York School" poets John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, and their close contemporary Amiri Baraka--Beautiful Enemies reveals a fundamental paradox at the heart of postwar American poetry and culture: the avant-garde's commitment to individualism and nonconformity runs directly counter to its own valorization of community and collaboration. In fact, Epstein demonstrates that the clash between friendship and nonconformity complicates the legendary alliances forged by postwar poets, becomes a predominant theme in the poetry they created, and leaves contemporary writers with a complicated legacy to negotiate. Rather than simply celebrating friendship and poetic community as nurturing and inspiring, these poets represent friendship as a kind of exhilarating, maddening contradiction, a site of attraction and repulsion, affinity and rivalry. Challenging both the reductive critiques of American individualism and the idealized, heavily biographical celebrations of literary camaraderie one finds in much critical discussion, this book provides a new interpretation of the peculiar dynamics of American avant-garde poetic communities and the role of the individual within them. By situating his extensive and revealing readings of these highly influential poets against the backdrop of Cold War cultural politics and within the context of American pragmatist thought, Epstein uncovers the collision between radical self-reliance and the siren call of the interpersonal at the core of postwar American poetry.
Added by: dovesnake | Karma: 1384.51 | Other | 5 October 2008
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Will Smith is a prince, and not just because he first became famous for his humorous rap music and his TV sitcom under the name "Fresh Prince." Although this African American is now a mega-star of the big screen, he's still a thoroughly decent person.
This broad-ranging companion brings together respected American and European critics and a number of up-and-coming scholars to provide an overview of Twain, his background, his writings, and his place in American literary history. * One of the most broad-ranging volumes to appear on Mark Twain in recent years. * Brings together respected Twain critics and a number of younger scholars in the field to provide an overview of this central figure in American literature. * Places special emphasis on the ways in which Twain's works remain both relevant and important for a twenty-first century audience. * A concluding essay evaluates the changing landscape of Twain criticism
