The Nineteenth-Century American Short Story: Language, Form and Ideology.

Abstract

For the first time, the methods of deconstruction are used to challenge traditional critical approaches to the short story. Alongside a review of these approaches, Douglas Tallack discusses the work of 19th-century America's major writers: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Gilman and James. short story is used as a means of raising key theoretical questions. relationships between language, form and ideology, gender, genre and literary history are examined in detail. The Nineteenth-Century American Short Story offers a provocative reading of an area largely neglected by contemporary theory. Of interest to students and teachers of English and American literature, critical theory and cultural studies, this book adds a critical edge to any discussion of the genre and its implications. Tallack is also the author of Twentieth-Century America (1991) and the editor of Literary Theory at Work (1987).