Prophet of the Storm: Richard Wright and the Radical Tradition

Reviewed by: Reading the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine: American Literature and Culture, 1870-1893 by Mark J. Noonan Anelise H. Shrout Reading the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine: American Literature and Culture, 1870-1893. By Mark J. Noonan. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2010. 235 pp. $65.00. Mark Noonan's Reading the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine: American Literature and Culture, 1870-1893, chronicles the foundation, rise, and decline of Scribner's Monthly. The magazine was founded in 1870, renamed the Century in 1881, and "sailed into oblivion" in the early twentieth century. While other illustrated magazines—most notably Harpers and the Atlantic Monthly—might be more familiar to readers today, Noonan argues that Scribner's/Century was particularly emblematic of a late nineteenth-century American journalism characterized by writers', editors', and publishers' ongoing attempts to make "a better, newer America" through prose, poetry, history, and commentary (xix). In describing Scribner's/Century's attempts to make that America, Noonan also points to moments when the publication of remarkable writing overshadowed the magazine's espoused aims. Scholars of periodical studies, mass communication theory, and the American press will find Reading the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine a useful and thought-provoking case study. Many will also be interested in Noonan's call for a holistic approach to periodical studies, which looks beyond individual writers and their works in order to take into account publications' entire bodies of work, and the ways in which editors, publishers, or literary conventions changed a periodical's character over time. As a result of this approach, Noonan's work intersects with historical processes that will be of interest to a wide range of scholars, including American expansion, national memory, gender norms, and race. Although the title suggests that readers' experiences might be a central focus of this book, Noonan's main characters are actually the writers and editors who shaped Scribner's/Century's message. The book is divided both temporally and thematically. Two sections, "the Holland Era, 1870-1881" and "the Gilder Era, 1881-1909," suggest the overarching importance of editors to the magazine's development. According to Noonan, Scribner's founder and first editor, Josiah Gilbert Holland, saw the magazine as a vehicle to "market" American moral values and history. The passage of editorship to Richard Watson Gilder in 1881 was marked by stylistic shifts which corresponded to changes in American literature more broadly, including a decline in women's fiction and a rise in "serious fiction"; an increased emphasis on realism; and the rhetorical production of a cohesive American identity accompanied by the "whitewashing" of American memories of the Civil War. These themes structure parallel chapters within each section. [End Page 85] Noonan argues that Scribner's was particularly noteworthy for the role that female writers played in its early years. In chapter two, he credits Helen Hunt Jackson, Mary Mapes Dodge, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Constance Fenimore Woolson with Scribner's initial success. Under Gilder, Noonan explains in Part II, the magazine saw a transition from the "alleged sentimentality of women's fiction" to "works written by men and for men" (90). Chapter four focuses on this shift, exemplified by the serialized publication of William Dean Howells's anti-sentimental A Modern Instance and Henry James's "famously antifeminist" The Bostonians (102). Chapter five complicates the transition by focusing on two authors—Burnett and John Hay—whose works seem to condone adultery and excessive violence, respectively. Ultimately, Gilder asked both Burnett and Hay to tone down the objectionable aspects of their work. In doing so, Noonan argues, Gilder solidified the magazine's project: to perpetuate middle class, genteel, white, and Victorian mores; and to prevent "coarse" or subversive material from circulating through the genteel press. Both Gilder and Holland also believed that Scribner's/Century should educate readers about American history and inculcate a genteel, cohesive American culture. In the 1870s, the magazine began to publish examples of "local color," focusing particularly on the South. The third chapter draws out a conflict between writers like Edward King, who effectively policed the boundaries of American culture by telling only the stories of white Americans, and those like George Washington Cable, who included the...

Books Are Made Out of Books: A Guide to Cormac McCarthy's Literary Influences

British and American literary classics are very rich, and they are the bright pearls in the treasure house of world literature. British and American literary creations are produced under unique regional cultures. Different regional cultures have their own language characteristics and connotations. To understand the work deeply, they must have a deep understanding and understanding of their background culture. British and American literature is an important reflection of British and American culture. By analyzing the language characteristics of British and American literature, we can better understand the development characteristics of British and American culture and strengthen our understanding of the background and connotation of British and American culture. Next, this paper will analyze the linguistic characteristics of British and American literary works from a cross-cultural perspective to strengthen the understanding and cognition of British and American culture.

In her article, Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviors in American Literature and Popular Culture, Dana Heller identifies and analyzes characteristics of the holy fool figure in American literature and culture. Heller defines the holy fool, or divine idiot, as a figure central to U.S. myths of nation. One encounters such figures in American literature as well as in American folklore, popular culture, and mass media. In American culture, the Divine Idiot is a hybrid form which grows out of the crossings of numerous literary and historical currents, both secular and non-secular. This unwieldy hybridity -the fact that Divine Idiots in American literature resonate across so many historical, national, cultural, and ethnic boundaries while retaining some loose correspondence with earlier Christian prototypes -has rendered them difficult to locate. However, this identification -or unveiling -is a crucial part of an idiot's social function and performance. In her analysis, Heller discusses writings by Flannery O'Connor, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, and films such as The Green Mile and Forrest Gump, in an effort to define divine idiocy in American culture as a means of addressing historical contradictions in American society. Dana Heller, Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviors in American Literature and Popular Culture” page 2 of 15 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 5.3 (2003):

Hot Music, Ragmentation, and the Bluing of American Literature is a multidisciplinary exploration of the ways that African American ohoto musicuminstrelsy, ragtime, jazz, and especially bluesuemerged into the American cultural mainstream in the nineteenth century and ultii??mately dominated American music and literature from 1920 to 1929. Exploring the deep and enduring relationship between music and literature, Hot Music, Ragmentation, and the Bluing of American Literature examines the diverse ways in which African American ohoto music ini??fluenced American cultureuparticularly literatureuin early twentieth century America. Steven C. Tracy provides a history of the fusion of Afrii??can and European elements that formed African American ohoto music, and considers how terms like ragtime, jazz, and blues developed their own particular meanings for American music and society. He draws from the fields of literature, literary criticism, cultural anthropology, American studies, and folklore to demonstrate how blues as a musical and poetic form has been a critical influence on American literature. Hot Music, Ragmentation, and the Bluing of American Literature begins by highlighting instances in which American writers, including Herman Melville, Stephen Crane, and Gertrude Stein, use African American culi??ture and music in their work, and then characterizes the social context of the Jazz Age, discussing how African American music reflected the wild abandon of the time. Tracy focuses on how a variety of schools of early twentieth century writers, from modernists to members of the Harlem Renaissance to dramatists and more, used their connections with ohoto music to give their own work meaning. TracyAEs extensive and detailed understanding of how African American ohoto music operates has produced a fresh and original perspective on its influence on mainstream American literature and culture. An experienced blues musician himself, Tracy draws on his performance background to offer an added dimension to his analysis. Where ani??other blues scholar might only analyse blues language, Tracy shows how the language is actually performed. Hot Music, Ragmentation, and the Bluing of American Literature is the first book to offer such a refreshingly broad interdisciplinary vision of the influence of African American ohoto music on American literature. It is an essential addition to the library of serious scholars of American and African American literature and culture and blues aficionados alike.

<i>Stephen Schryer</i> Fantasies of the New Class: Ideologies of Professionalism in Post–World War II American Fiction<i>Fantasies of the New Class: Ideologies of Professionalism in Post–World War II American Fiction</i>. Stephen Schryer. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Pp. 278.

<i>Cultural Capital</i>: Reflections from a Latin Americanist

Focusing on texts written between 1880 and 1930, Mary McAleer Balkun explores the concept of the 'counterfeit', both in terms of material goods and invented identities, and the ways that the acquisition of objects came to define individuals in American culture and literature. Counterfeiting is, in one sense, about the creation of something that appears authentic - an invented self, a museum display, a forged work of art. But the counterfeit can also be a means by which the authentic is measured, thereby creating our conception of the true or real. When counterfeiting is applied to individual identities, it fosters fluidity in social boundaries and the games of social climbing and passing that have come to be representative of American culture: the Horatio Alger story, the con man or huckster, the social climber, the ethnically ambiguous. Balkun provides new readings of traditional texts such as The Great Gatsby, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The House of Mirth, as well as readings of less-studied texts, such as Walt Whitman's Specimen Days and Nella Larsen's Passing. In each of these texts, Balkun locates the presence of manufactured identities and counterfeit figures, demonstrating that where authenticity and consumerism intersect, the self becomes but another commodity to be promoted, sold, and eventually consumed.

Book Review| September 01 2007 Cosmopolitan Vistas: American Regionalism and Literary Value; At Home in the City: Urban Domesticity in American Literature and Culture, 1850-1930; Literature of Place: Dwelling on the Land before Earth Day 1970; Seeking the Region in American Literature and Culture: Modernity, Dissidence, Innovation Stephanie Foote Stephanie Foote Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Literature (2007) 79 (3): 615–618. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2007-026 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Stephanie Foote; Cosmopolitan Vistas: American Regionalism and Literary Value; At Home in the City: Urban Domesticity in American Literature and Culture, 1850-1930; Literature of Place: Dwelling on the Land before Earth Day 1970; Seeking the Region in American Literature and Culture: Modernity, Dissidence, Innovation. American Literature 1 September 2007; 79 (3): 615–618. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-2007-026 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Duke University Press2007 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

vol. 6, 2014 Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA The year 2013 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Lawrence Levine’s Highbrow/ Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. The book was immediately, and wildly, influential among American cultural historians and students of American literature. I remember attending a national meeting shortly after it came out where participants reverentially invoked Levine’s key terms and assumptions, as if they had discovered in the book’s pages an explanation, deeply satisfying both ideologically and emotionally, for a phenomenon that had long been troubling them. In the years since 1988, Highbrow/Lowbrow has exhibited the staying power of a classic, a status certified by the book’s appearance on countless syllabi and oral exam lists. Today it remains available in paperback and in a Kindle version, and I am told that a French edition was just recently published. Many of us have profited a great deal from Levine’s study, and we lament his untimely death in 2006. Yet those of us who have been working in the history of the book and related areas have arrived at a point where we might profitably reassess the arguments of Highbrow/Lowbrow, instead of merely appropriating its framework. What have we learned over the last twentyfive years about cultural hierarchy in America? What Rethinking the Creation of Cultural Hierarchy in America

The French Reception of <i>Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</i>: A Belated Consecration

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, there was a sudden surge of interest in Ernst Cassirer’s major work, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–29), and Erwin Panofsky’s essay, ‘Perspective as Symbolic Form’ (1927), an interest that has continued uninterrupted to the present day. Particularly amongst art historians, however, a serious misunderstanding remains evident here – the confusing of ‘symbolic form’ with ‘symbol’. Cultural and perceptual mediations, in which objects (and subjects) are only just in the process of forming, are carelessly turned into arbitrary, isolated objects of art history or pictorial history. Every work, in this view, is regarded as a ‘symbolic form’ to the extent that a representation of the world is ‘expressed’ in it. This article initially reviews Panofsky’s essay in order to establish the context in which the art historian uses the term ‘symbolic form’. His use of it is then compared with Cassirer’s original understanding of the term. A careful distinction is made between ‘symbol’, ‘symbolic pregnance’, and ‘symbolic form’, and this is followed by an analysis of scattered remarks in Cassirer’s writings, and particularly in his posthumous manuscripts and notes, on ‘art’ as symbolic form and on the spatial form that is prior to all perception and art production, as well as his call for a kind of art history that conceives of itself as a scholarly discipline. The article concludes with the recognition that Panofsky not only deliberately, but justifiably – that is, in the spirit of Cassirer, at least – transferred the expression ‘symbolic form’ to ‘perspective’.

How Nineteenth-Century American Literature got its Nerve Back Donald E. Pease (bio) The Politics of Anxiety in Nineteenth-Century American Literature by Justine Murison, Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, gen. ed. Ross Posnock. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. 215. $90.00 cloth. The Politics of Anxiety in Nineteenth-Century American Literature was published in Ross Posnock’s Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture series at Cambridge University Press. Unlike the other contributors to this series, Justine Murison situates her work at the cusp of a recent neuroscientific turn embraced by a new generation of scholar-critics intent on supplementing rather than replacing psychoanalytic interpretive paradigms. Murison stakes the interpretive politics of Politics of Anxiety on the revival of a nineteenth-century discourse of nervous physiology that prefigured psychoanalysis. After locating the historical origins of the neurocognitive turn in nineteenth-century understandings of nervous physiology, Murison demonstrates how this pre-Freudian discourse challenges prevailing assumptions about psychology and affect in twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary scholarship. Rather than restricting her project to this biopolitical turn, however, Murison mines the nineteenth-century scientific archive to proliferate historical angles from which to approach nineteenth-century American literature. According to Murison, the nineteenth-century precursors of the neuroscientific turn shared with their descendants the desire to find evidence-based perspectives from which to explain the anxious, nervous artifacts called literary texts. [End Page 139] The Politics of Anxiety engages complexly with the discourse of nervous physiology to show how it structured nineteenth-century narratives of national history and social life. Murison specifically explains how American authors and readers responded to questions about heredity, self-possession, freedom, sexual desire, and biological determinism by exploring pre-Freudian explanations of the nervous system. In the nineteenth century, the nervous body replaced the previous model of the relation between mind and body as regulated by the fluid exchange of the humors. As the repository of antebellum American culture’s basic psychosomatic assumptions, the discourse of nervous physiology exerted widespread physical, as well as metaphysical, influence. The nervous system it described was believed to govern the body and the body politic by exposing both to environmental vicissitudes. Perceived as a system of dynamic interaction with its environment that demanded constant physiological adjustments, nineteenth-century American society was understood to be nervous because it was fraught with the power to change, yet utterly dependent upon an anxious body politic. Nineteenth-century American culture was an era of somatic ethics and nervous politics. Somatic nervousness supplied nineteenth-century artists, politicians, social scientists, historians, reformers, and physicians with a lens to inspect the physiological imperatives structuring moral, spiritual, and political struggles. These imperatives could not be explained as biologically determined because the aberrant physiology of the nervous system resisted such universalizing claims. Although the discourse of nervous physiology endowed soma with anxious significance, the precise workings of the nervous system remained a mystery to scientists and physicians, as well as their patients. This lack of certitude facilitated discourses about the nervous system that were expressive of diverse, even contradictory, explanations and opinions. Confusion surrounding the nervous physiology and the lack of agreed-upon criteria for the certification of physicians made it difficult to distinguish scientifically verifiable medical practices from pseudoscience and sheer quackery. Unlicensed until the 1870s, the field of medicine included “irregular” practitioners—homeopaths, Grahamites, phrenologists, botanical Thomsonians, mesmerists, table tappers, hydropaths, and spiritualist mediums. Physiological terms for the nerves—which included “sympathy,” “animal electricity,” “the nervous fluid,” and the “odylic principle”—became truly ubiquitous only when they entered the idiom popularized within newspapers, journals, fictional tales, and novels. [End Page 140] In The Politics of Anxiety, Murison reads across an archive spanning literature, medicine, politics, and popular culture to show how the notion of the nervous self assumed hegemony by finding its way into Putnam’s and The Democratic Review and United States Magazine, theological debates about spirit bodies, phrenology, homeopathic medicine pamphlets, mesmeric procedures, abolitionist and domestic ideologies, gothic tales, political satires, city mystery novels, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, spiritualists’ rationales for prescribing water cures, calisthenic manuals, how-to-books in electrical psychology, animal magnetism instruction, fictional accounts of phantom...

There is a reflexive relationship between the image of the city and its ruination in American literature and culture. The city orders the way in which we conceive of the democratic experience, and its ruin exposes the problems inherent in that urban order. Far from being set up as an oppositional pair, the concept of “cities and ruins” instigates a semantic dance of interrelated meanings that informs our civic participation and our modes of passing into the future. This essay reviews three texts, recently published, that explore the renewed emphasis in American studies on the role of the city in literature and culture and the processes of its ruin: The City in American Literature and Culture, edited by Kevin McNamara, Miles Orvell’s Empire of Ruins: American Culture, Photography, and the Spectacle of Destruction, and Andrew F. Wood’s A Rhetoric of Ruins: Exploring Landscapes of Abandoned Modernity.

This dissertation argues that the American dream is a large-scale cultural myth, and that through an analysis of the dream’s mythic structure we can locate a paradigm according to which both American literature and American culture are organized. The American dream has maintained unique relevance across the historical, regional, and cultural diversity of the American nation, in part because it always remains abstract and resists firm definition. Nevertheless, by breaking the broad myth into its most basic elemental parts we can begin to see patterns across the many distinctive versions of the American dream, such that we can identify the American dream as a generic category. This project therefore proceeds by analyzing the most basic narrative features of the American dream: its actor or hero, its setting or universe, and its primary action. Through an analysis of the figure of the self-made man, the “frontier” as American spatial metaphor, and the action of upward mobility, this dissertation locates common features across myriad versions of this American dream myth in order to establish the American dream as a pervasive organizing ideal within American culture. This dissertation focuses its study on American fiction of the twentieth century, where the American dream finds its clearest articulations, and it has special recourse to nineteenth-century and early American history and culture as the ground for this modern sense of the American dream. Finally, I end with a discussion of American literature of the last decade, in which I discuss prevalent contemporary attitudes about the American dream in order to assess its current condition. Ultimately, this dissertation suggests that the American dream, because it is a genuine cultural myth, both organizes American cultural experience and structures American literature about that experience.