Background to Dylan Thomas, and other explorations

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[compiled by] Gordon Hutner

"American Literature, American Culture is the first comprehensive anthology of American literary criticism to appear in many years and the first collection to bring together the tradition of American literary criticism as cultural critique. This unique anthology assembles reviews of early works, major critical essays, excerpts from landmark studies, and the most influential examples of the criticism practiced today. The selections address the dominant questions in the American literary tradition: What are the cultural responsibilities of the American writer? What are the characteristics of a national literature? Is a national literature even possible? How do gender and race affect the way we understand literature? What role does literature play in a democratic society?" "American Literature, American Culture is ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature, criticism, and American studies. It also makes a useful supplementary text in upper-level courses in criticism."--BOOK JACKET.

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Alexander Welsh

"Welsh closely examines the two novels Dickens wrote after David Copperfield and reassesses the importance of this crucial stage of Dickens's career.". "In spite of the famous double narrative of Bleak House, says Welsh, the various actions and roles of the characters answer the needs of the protagonist much as they do in David Copperfield. Dickens redresses himself as the female narrator Esther Summerson and at the same time redirects his artistic energy in forms less explicitly personal. When he wrote Hard Times - which can be considered an epilogue to the much longer Bleak House - Dickens was able to conceive a plot neither centered around a hero nor fueled by the kind of wish fulfillment that structure had implied. Welsh's engaging discussion and original insights into two of Dickens's most successful novels will enhance the enthusiast's pleasure in reading these works and inspire longtime students of the novelist to think about Dickens's extraordinary accomplishments in new ways."--BOOK JACKET.

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Lydia H. Liu

This study - bridging contemporary theory, Chinese history, comparative literature, and culture studies - analyzes the historical interactions among China, Japan, and the West in terms of "translingual practice." By this term, the author refers to the process by which new words, meanings, discourses, and modes of representation arose, circulated, and acquired legitimacy in early modern China as it contacted/collided with European/Japanese languages and literatures. In reexamining the rise of modern Chinese literature in this context, the book asks three central questions: How did "modernity" and "the West" become legitimized in May Fourth literary discourse? What happened to native agency in this complex process of legitimation? How did the Chinese national culture imagine and interpret its own moment of unfolding? . After the first chapter, which deals with the theoretical issues, ensuing chapters treat particular instances of translingual practice such as national character, individualism, stylistic innovations, first-person narration, and canon formation.

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Anna Marie Sandoval

"Weaving strands of Chicana and Mexicana subjectivities, Toward a Latina Feminism of the Americas explores political and theoretical agendas, particularly those that undermine the patriarchy, across a diverse range of Latina authors." "Anna Sandoval considers resistance to traditional cultural symbols and contemporary efforts to counteract negative representations of womanhood in literature and society." "Offering a new perspective on the oppositional nature of Latina writers, Sandoval emphasizes the ways in which national literatures have privileged male authors, whose viewpoints are generally distinct from that of women - a point of departure rarely acknowledged in postcolonial theory. Applying her observations to the disciplinary, historical, and spatial facets of literary production, Sandoval interrogates the boundaries of the Latina experience. This is a concise yet ambitious comparative approach to the historical and cultural connections (as well as disparities) found in Chicana and Mexicana literature."--Back cover.