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The American Novel series provides students of American literature with introductory critical guides to the great works of American fiction. Each volume begins with a substantial introduction by a distinguished authority on the text, giving details of the work's composition, publication history, and contemporary reception, as well as a survey of the major critical trends and readings from first publication to the present. The overview is followed by newly commissioned essays and a guide to further reading. The series is an invaluable resource for all undergraduates engaged in the critical analysis of major American novels.'Winners not only because of the generally high level of performance of the separate essayists but also because of the informative, witty overviews by their editors.'American Fiction

  • Senior Editors: Emory Elliot, University of California, Riverside

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24 results in The American Novel

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New Essays on The Sound and the Fury
  • Edited by Noel Polk
  • Published online:
    23 December 2009
    Print publication:
    29 October 1993
  • While William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury met with only limited success when published in 1929, it since has become one of the most popular of Faulkner's novels, serving as a litmus paper upon which critical approaches have tested themselves. In the introduction to this volume Noel Polk traces the critical responses to the novel from the time of its publication to the present day. The essays that follow present contemporary reassessments of The Sound and the Fury from a variety of critical perspectives. Dawn Trouard offers us the women of The Sound and the Fury, reading against the grain of the predominant critical tradition that sees the women through the lens of masculine cultural biases. Donald M. Kartiganer comes to terms with the ways in which the novel simultaneously attracts readers and resists readings. Richard Godden discusses the relationship between incest and miscegenation. Noel Polk examines closely the way Faulkner experiments with language.

New Essays on The Education of Henry Adams
  • John Carlos Rowe
  • Published online:
    15 December 2009
    Print publication:
    28 June 1996
  • This volume in The American Novel series addresses the established reputation of The Education of Henry Adams as a classic work of American autobiography and canonical work of American literature. Examining The Education in terms of early twentieth-century American attitudes to education, gender, US foreign policy, and historiography, these essays add considerably to our understanding of the Education as an expression of its time. The approaches of the four contributors - John Carlos Rowe, Brook Thomas, Martha Banta, and Howard Horwitz - complement each other, even though the specific topic explored by each scholar is distinctly different from the others. The result is a remarkably coherent volume that explains in original ways the continuing importance of The Education of Henry Adams as literature and history.

New Essays on Billy Budd
  • Edited by Donald Yannella
  • Published online:
    02 December 2009
    Print publication:
    25 July 2002
  • Billy Budd is Herman Melville's most read work after Moby-Dick. Melville wrote the novella during the 5 years before his death, and it was published posthumously in 1924. The essays collected here provide a multifaceted introduction to the work. Areas investigated include nineteenth-century political and social dynamics and the literary response they provoked, as well as the relevance of mythology and the histories of classical world and Judaeo-Christian civilization to Melville's book. Also examined are Melville's later writing, including the late poetry, the text's development, and its ambiguities. This collection will prove an invaluable resource for students of this major American writer.

New Essays on Light in August
  • Edited by Michael Millgate
  • Published online:
    23 November 2009
    Print publication:
    26 June 1987
  • Light in August (1932) is one of William Faulkner's most important, most challenging, and most widely studied novels, demanding to be approached from many angles and with a variety of critical and scholarly skills. Here five distinguished critics offer just such a range of approaches, discussing the novel in terms of its composition and its place in Faulkner's oeuvre; its structure and narrative techniques; its relation to the religious, racial, and sexual assumptions of the society it depicts; its presentation of women and handling of gender-related issues; and the social and moral implications of the 'hero' status accorded to a figure like Joe Christmas. Each contributor has had a double ambition: to write clearly and directly, thus making the volume accessible to the widest possible audience, and to write freshly and originally, so as to enhance - even for those thoroughly familiar with the existing criticism - understanding and appreciation of Light in August itself and of Faulkner's work as a whole.

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