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Within two years of coming out in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird had
been translated into ten languages, won the Pulitzer Prize, and
been made into an Oscar-winning film. It spent an astonishing 88
weeks on the American bestseller lists. But while acclaimed by
critics it also attracted attention of a different kind. Like The
Catcher in the Rye (1951), that other bestseller about childhood,
Mockingbird was widely banned from local libraries and school
curricula from the 1960s through to the 1980s. One early reviewer
called To Kill a Mockingbird "a wholesome book on an unwholesome
theme". Those charged with the care of the youth were
hypersensitive about what the fictional young should be made to see
and hear in novels: words like "damn", "piss", "whore lady" - and
(as with Huckleberry Finn) "nigger" - even though in the context of
a critique of racial prejudice. But the objections went beyond
words alone. The story of children being confronted by a rape case
seemed inappropriate in a book to be read by real-life children. So
did the book's portrayal of "institutionalized racism", as one
group of protestors in Indiana put it, "under the guise of 'good
literature'". In this compelling guide, Stephen Fender looks at why
a novel which has been called a "period piece" remains so popular -
and examines what it tells us about racism and indeed about the
nature of humanity.
English writers have a way of invoking paternal imagery when
thinking of Chaucer. "The Medieval word for a Poet, was a Maker,"
said G.K Chesterton, and "there was never a man who was more of a
maker than Chaucer. He made a national language; he came very near
to making a nation. At least without him it would probably have
been neither so fine a language or so great a nation. Shakespeare
and Milton were the greatest sons of their country; but Chaucer was
the father of his country, rather in the manner of George
Washington." A sweeping claim, maybe, but with a nucleus of truth.
Chaucer really was a kind of English founding father. He didn't
invent the language for literature but he chose it - and put his
energy into exploiting and developing it. And The Canterbury Tales
is where it happened. The Canterbury Tales was truly original.
Chaucer's narrators, pilgrims on the road to Canterbury, range from
a knight to a wealthy landowner, a merchant, a miller and minor
church officials. They are brought to life by vivid descriptions of
their clothing, bodily appearance and behaviour - and through the
wide variety of English vernacular they voice. These are the raw
materials out of which Chaucer not only produces comedy but
develops themes like the condition of the church, the conflict
between fate and free will, and what it is that constitutes
authority, whether in the Bible or the conventions of courtly-love
romance. In 1478, the printer William Caxton thought it to be such
an English monument that he invested a fortune in time and money to
publish The Canterbury Tales as the first ever book in English to
be printed in England. It has never been out of print since.
Working through close rhetorical analysis of everything from
fiction and journalism to documents and documentaries, this book
looks at how popular memory favors the country Depression over the
economic crisis in the nation 's cities and factories. Over eighty
years after it happened, the Depression still lives on in iconic
images of country poor whites in the novels of John Steinbeck, the
photographs of Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein, the documentary
films of Pare Lorenz and the thousands of share-croppers life
histories as taken down by the workers of the Federal Writers
Project.
Like the politicians and bureaucrats who accomplished the New
Deal 's radical reforms in banking, social security and labor union
law, the artists, novelists and other writers who supported or even
worked for the New Deal were idealists, well to the left of center
in their politics. Yet when it came to hard times on the American
farm, something turned them into unwitting reactionaries. Though
they brought these broken lives of the country poor to the notice
and sympathy of the public, they also worked unconsciously to
undermine their condition.
How and why? Fender shows how the answer lies in clues
overlooked until now, hidden in their writing -- their journalism
and novels, the "life histories" they ghost wrote for their poor
white clients, the bureaucratic communications through which they
administered these cultural programs, even in the documentary
photographs and movies, with their insistent captions and
voice-overs. This book is a study of literary examples from in and
around the country Depression, and the myths on which they
drew.
Working through close rhetorical analysis of everything from
fiction and journalism to documents and documentaries, this book
looks at how popular memory favors the country Depression over the
economic crisis in the nation's cities and factories. Over eighty
years after it happened, the Depression still lives on in iconic
images of country poor whites - in the novels of John Steinbeck,
the photographs of Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein, the
documentary films of Pare Lorenz and the thousands of
share-croppers' life histories as taken down by the workers of the
Federal Writers' Project. Like the politicians and bureaucrats who
accomplished the New Deal's radical reforms in banking, social
security and labor union law, the artists, novelists and other
writers who supported or even worked for the New Deal were
idealists, well to the left of center in their politics. Yet when
it came to hard times on the American farm, something turned them
into unwitting reactionaries. Though they brought these broken
lives of the country poor to the notice and sympathy of the public,
they also worked unconsciously to undermine their condition. How
and why? Fender shows how the answer lies in clues overlooked until
now, hidden in their writing -- their journalism and novels, the
"life histories" they ghost wrote for their poor white clients, the
bureaucratic communications through which they administered these
cultural programs, even in the documentary photographs and movies,
with their insistent captions and voice-overs. This book is a study
of literary examples from in and around the country Depression, and
the myths on which they drew.
First published between 1982 and 1983, this series examines the
peculiarly American cultural context out of which the nation's
literature has developed. Covering the years from 1620 to 1830,
this first volume of American Literature in Context examines a
range of texts from the writings of the Puritan settlers through
the declaration of Independence to the novels of Fenimore Cooper.
In doing so, it shows how early Americans thought about their
growing nation, their arguments for immigration, for political and
cultural independence, and the doubts they experienced in this
ambitious project. This book will be of interest to those studying
American literature and American studies.
First published between 1982 and 1983, this series examines the
peculiarly American cultural context out of which the nation's
literature has developed. Covering the years from 1620 to 1830,
this first volume of American Literature in Context examines a
range of texts from the writings of the Puritan settlers through
the declaration of Independence to the novels of Fenimore Cooper.
In doing so, it shows how early Americans thought about their
growing nation, their arguments for immigration, for political and
cultural independence, and the doubts they experienced in this
ambitious project. This book will be of interest to those studying
American literature and American studies.
A wonderful new collection of tales exploring Henry James's
favourite 'international theme': the experiences of Americans in
Europe, and the meeting of the old world and new. Daisy Miller is
one of Henry James's great heroines - a young, independent American
travelling in Europe, whose flouting of social conventions has the
potential to lead to disaster. Her story is here accompanied by six
more set among English castles, Swiss hotels and French ports, and
all riffing on a classic Jamesian theme: the clash between the old
world and new, Europe and America. The tales included in this
volume are 'Travelling Companions', 'Madame de Mauves', 'Four
Meetings', 'Daisy Miller', 'An International Episode', 'Europe' and
'Fordham Castle', and the collection has been edited by renowned
scholar of Anglo-American literature, Stephen Fender, under the
general editorship of Philip Horne. This is one of three new
volumes of James's greatest tales in Penguin Classics, and is
accompanied by The Aspern Papers and Other Tales and The Turn of
the Screw and Other Tales (forthcoming).
This book focuses on the experience of the Californian Gold Rush of
1849-1850, not in terms of what happened (a subject much covered by
historians) but in terms of how people of various levels of
sophistication wrote about it. Drawing on a variety of sources -
diaries, journals, letters, and contemporary journalism - Dr Fender
explores how both amateur and professional writers attempted to
come to terms with the physical wilderness of the transcontinental
landscape and the social wilderness of early California. Dr Fender
has produced an intriguing and highly readable book, which should
prove fascinating not only to a wide range of students in the field
of American studies but also to non-specialists who are interested
in nineteenth-century American literary and cultural history.
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