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The Game as It Is Played comprises the best of Donald Pizer's
essays on Theodore Dreiser. Pizer, one of Dreiser's principal
critics over the past forty years, is especially concerned in
establishing the distinctive nature and quality of Dreiser's
naturalism in many of these essays. From one of Dreiser's earliest
short stories to his acknowledged masterpiece, An American Tragedy,
Pizer demonstrates that in Dreiser's hands naturalism is not the
blunt instrument it is usually assumed to be but rather a powerful
tool for the rendering of a complex view of the human condition. In
addition, the essays explore several of the more controversial
areas of Dreiser scholarship, including his late conversion to
communism, his anti-Semitism, and the text of Sister Carrie.
A new appraisal of Dos Passos's work and life, Toward a Modernist
Style describes both the central currents in his early work, and
his full participation in literary modernism, culminating in his
U.S.A. trilogy, as well as the relationship of these currents to
those of an especially vibrant period in American expression.
Donald Pizer charts the evolution of Dos Passos's artistic
sensibility from its largely conventional expression at the start
of the 1920s to the radical formal experimentation of U.S.A. at its
close. He places this development in Dos Passos's writing in the
context of contemporary ideas about art and society. Pizer also
looks at the important roles that Dos Passos's expatriation and his
relationship with Ernest Hemingway played in his work as well as
his efforts as a painter and their relationship to his literary
art. Toward a Modernist Style is both an incisive guide to a major
American modernist as well as an exploration of the wider currents
that created literary modernism in the early twentieth century.
A new appraisal of Dos Passos's work and life, Toward a Modernist
Style describes both the central currents in his early work, and
his full participation in literary modernism, culminating in his
U.S.A. trilogy, as well as the relationship of these currents to
those of an especially vibrant period in American expression.
Donald Pizer charts the evolution of Dos Passos's artistic
sensibility from its largely conventional expression at the start
of the 1920s to the radical formal experimentation of U.S.A. at its
close. He places this development in Dos Passos's writing in the
context of contemporary ideas about art and society. Pizer also
looks at the important roles that Dos Passos's expatriation and his
relationship with Ernest Hemingway played in his work as well as
his efforts as a painter and their relationship to his literary
art. Toward a Modernist Style is both an incisive guide to a major
American modernist as well as an exploration of the wider currents
that created literary modernism in the early twentieth century.
In his first book devoted exclusively to naturalism, Donald
Pizer brings together thirteen essays and four reviews written over
a thirty-year period that in their entirety constitute a full-scale
interpretation of the basic character and historical shape of
naturalism in America.
The essays fall into three groups. Some deal with the full range
of American naturalism, from the 1590s to the late twentieth
century, and some are confined either to the 1890s or to the
twentieth century. In addition to the essays, an introduction in
which Pizer recounts the development of his interest in American
naturalism, reviews of recent studies of naturalism, and a selected
bibliography contribute to an understanding of Pizer's
interpretation of the movement.
One of the recurrent themes in the essays is that the
interpretation of American naturalism has been hindered by the
common view that the movement is characterized by a commitment to
Emile Zola's deterministic beliefs and that naturalistic novels are
thus inevitably crude and simplistic both in theme and method.
Rather than accept this notion, Pizer insists that naturalistic
novels be read closely not for their success or failure in
rendering obvious deterministic beliefs but rather for what
actually does occur within the dynamic play of theme and form
within the work.
Adopting this method, Pizer finds that naturalistic fiction
often reveals a complex and suggestive mix of older humanistic
faiths and more recent doubts about human volition, and that it
renders this vital thematic ambivalence in increasingly
sophisticated forms as the movement matures. In addition, Pizer
demonstrates that American naturalism cannot be viewed
monolithically as a school with a common body of belief and value.
Rather, each generation of American naturalists, as well as major
figures within each generation, has responded to threads within the
naturalistic impulse in strikingly distinctive ways. And it is
indeed this absence of a rigid doctrinal core and the openness of
the movement to individual variation that are responsible for the
remarkable vitality and longevity of the movement.
Because the essays have their origin in efforts to describe the
general characteristics of American naturalism rather than in a
desire to cover the field fully, some authors and works are
discussed several times (though from different angles) and some
referred to only briefly or not at all. But the essays as a
collection are "complete" in the sense that they comprise an
interpretation of American naturalism both in its various phases
and as a whole. Those authors whose works receive substantial
discussion include Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser,
Edith Wharton, James T. Farrell, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates,
and William Kennedy. Of special interest is Pizer's essay on
"Ironweed, "which appears here for the first time.
Lynching in American Literature and Journalism consists of twelve
essays investigating the history and development of writing about
lynching as an American tragedy and the ugliest element of national
character. According to the Tuskegee Institute, 4,743 people were
lynched between 1882 and 1968 in the United States, including 3,446
African Americans and 1,297 European Americans. More than 73
percent of the lynchings in the Civil War period occurred in the
Southern states. The Lynchings increased dramatically in the
aftermath of the Reconstruction, after slavery had been abolished
and free men gained the right to vote. The peak of lynching
occurred in 1882, after Southern white Democrats had regained
control of the state legislators. This book is a collection of
historical and critical discussions of lynching in America that
reflects the shameful, unmoral policies, and explores the topic of
lynching within American history, literature, and journalism.
The terms realism and naturalism are considered in the context of expressing a style of American writing in relation to late nineteenth century fiction movements. This text analyzes ten major texts, from W.D. Howell's The Rise of Silas Lapham to Jack London's The Call of the Wild.
The introduction by Donald Pizer describes in detail the biographical and historical background of the novel and its critical reputation. The four original essays in the volume not only touch on long-established approaches to Sister Carrie but also reflect a number of the concerns of recent scholarly and critical movements. Each of the essays is a self-standing examination of a major area of interest in the novel, including such topics as the impact of Dreiser's own life on the creation of Carrie and Hurstwood, the relationship of Carrie and the theater, and Dreiser's naturalism and his narrative technique.
The introduction by Donald Pizer describes in detail the biographical and historical background of the novel and its critical reputation. The four original essays in the volume not only touch on long-established approaches to Sister Carrie but also reflect a number of the concerns of recent scholarly and critical movements. Each of the essays is a self-standing examination of a major area of interest in the novel, including such topics as the impact of Dreiser's own life on the creation of Carrie and Hurstwood, the relationship of Carrie and the theater, and Dreiser's naturalism and his narrative technique.
The Novels of Theodore Dreiser was first published in 1976.
Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make
long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published
unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
Relying heavily on the manuscripts and letters in the Dreiser
Collection of the University of Pennsylvania Library, Professor
Pizer seeks to establish the facts of the sources and composition
of each of Dreiser's eight novels and to study the themes and form
of the completed works. In this study he relates what can be
discovered about the factual reality of a novel to its imaginative
reality. His interpretation of the novels avoids the suggestion
that there is a single overriding theme or direction in Dreiser's
work and emphasizes that Dreiser deserves examination primarily on
the basis of the individuality and worth of each of his novels. A
separate chapter is devoted to each of the novels: Sister Carrie,
Jennie Gerhardt, The "Genius," The Financier, The Titan, An
American Tragedy, The Bulwark, and The Stoic.
All of American author Frank Norris's significant critical writings
have been compiled in this book, including his articles for the San
Francisco Wave during 1896-1897 and selections from his "Weekly
Letter" column for the Chicago American in 1901. Essays from these
two previously unexploited sources, comprising almost half the
book, reveal certain areas of Norris's thought which heretofore had
been overlooked by scholars. This book was compiled in order to
clarify Frank Norris's literary creed. When Donald Pizer began to
read Norris's uncollected critical articles, he observed concepts
which had been unnoted or misunderstood by his critics. Crediting
this to the inadequate representation of Norris's ideas in the
posthumous The Responsibilities of the Novelist (1903), Pizer
recognized the need for an interpretive and complete edition of
Norris's critical writings. This volume thus fills a noticeable gap
in the field of American literary criticism. By the time of his
death in 1902 Norris had a closed system of critical ideas. This
core of ideas, however, is only peripherally related to the
conventional concept of literary naturalism, which perhaps explains
why critics have gone astray trying to find Zolaesque ideas in
Norris's criticism. Norris's central idea, around which he built an
aesthetic of the novel, was that the best novel combines an
intensely primitivistic subject matter and theme with a highly
sophisticated form. His paradox of sophisticated primitivism
clarifies the vital link between the fiction produced in the 1890s
and that written by Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck. Norris's
essays deal with many of the literary themes which preoccupy modern
critical theorists. His range of subjects includes the form and
function of the novel; definitions of naturalism, realism, and
romanticism; and the problem of what constitutes an American novel.
His interpretation of commonplace events, his comments on prominent
figures of his day, and his parodies of writers such as Bret Harte,
Stephen Crane, and Rudyard Kipling are characterized by ingenuity
and perception. Through these writings the personality of a man
with well-defined convictions and the ability to expound them
provocatively comes into sharp focus. In a general introduction
Pizer summarizes Norris's critical position and surveys his career
as literary critic. This introduction and the interpretative
introductions preceding each section constitute an illuminating
essay on the literary temper of the period and provide a new
insight into Norris' craft and his literary philosophy.
This research work deals with subjects of great interest in current
criticism---the impact of the New Historicist studies on the
interpretation of American literary naturalism, and the issue of
the possible persistence of the movement in contemporary fiction.
Other essays deal with Norris, Crane and Dreiser who have up to now
been considered canonical figures within literary naturalism while
Wharton and Chopin are discussed as recent and welcome additions to
the discussion of this movement and American literature in general.
This work should be seen as a successor to Pizer's well received
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF AMERICAN LITERARY NATURALISM (1993).
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