The dream of the great American novel /
Lawrence Buell.
- Cambridge, Mass. : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.
- 567 p.; 24 cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Birth, heyday, and seeming decline -- Reborn from the critical ashes -- The reluctant master text : the making and remakings of Hawthorne's The scarlet letter -- "Success" stories from Benjamin Franklin to the dawn of modernism -- Belated ascendancy : Fitzgerald to Faulkner, Dreiser to Wright and Bellow -- Up-from stories in hyphenated America : Ellison, Roth, and beyond -- Uncle Tom's cabin and its aftermaths -- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and its others -- Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the wind, and literary interracialism North and South -- Toni Morrison's Beloved as culmination and augury -- Melville's Moby-Dick : from oblivion to great American novel -- The great American novel of early twentieth century breakdown : Dos Passos's U.S.A. or Steinbeck's The grapes of wrath? -- Late twentieth-century maximalism : Pynchon's Gravity's rainbow and its rainbow.
Taking in the full sweep of national fiction, this title explains why this supposedly antiquated idea continues to thrive. It shows that four G A N "scripts" are keys to the dynamics of American literature and identity - and to the myth of a nation perpetually under construction
9780674051157 (alk. paper)
2013032745
American fiction--History and criticism.--19th century American fiction--History and criticism.--20th century National characteristics, American, in literature. Literature and society--History--United States--19th century. Literature and society--History--United States--20th century. Ficción estadounidense--Historia y crítica.--Siglo XIX Ficción estadounidense--Historia y crítica.--Siglo XX Características nacionales, American en la literatura. Literatura y sociedad--Historia--Estados Unidos--Siglo XIX. Literatura y sociedad--Historia--Estados Unidos--Siglo XX.