If America worships success, then why has the nation's literature dwelled obsessively on failure? This book explores encounters with failure by nineteenth-century writers - ranging from Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville to Mark Twain and Sarah Orne Jewett - whose celebrated works more often struck readers as profoundly messy, flawed and even perverse. Reading textual inconsistency against the backdrop of a turbulent nineteenth century, Gavin Jones describes how the difficulties these writers faced in their faltering ...
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If America worships success, then why has the nation's literature dwelled obsessively on failure? This book explores encounters with failure by nineteenth-century writers - ranging from Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville to Mark Twain and Sarah Orne Jewett - whose celebrated works more often struck readers as profoundly messy, flawed and even perverse. Reading textual inconsistency against the backdrop of a turbulent nineteenth century, Gavin Jones describes how the difficulties these writers faced in their faltering search for new styles, coherent characters and satisfactory endings uncovered experiences of blunder and inadequacy hidden in the culture at large. Through Jones's treatment, these American writers emerge as the great theorists of failure who discovered ways to translate their own social insecurities into complex portrayals of a modern self, founded in moral fallibility, precarious knowledge and negative feelings.
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Add this copy of Failure and the American Writer: a Literary History to cart. $11.51, very good condition, Sold by AMM Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Gillingham, KENT, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2014 by Cambridge University Press.
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New. Trade paperback (US). Contains: Line drawings, Halftones. Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture . 15 b/w illus. Intended for professional and scholarly audience.
Add this copy of Failure and the American Writer: a Literary History to cart. $24.03, new condition, Sold by Pumpkin Wholesale Ltd rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Abingdon, Oxon, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2014 by Cambridge University Press.
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If America worships success, then why has the nation's literature dwelled obsessively on failure? This book explores encounters with failure by nineteenth-century writers-ranging from Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville to Mark Twain and Sarah Orne Jewett-whose celebrated works more often struck readers as profoundly messy, flawed and even perverse. Reading textual inconsistency against the backdrop of a turbulent nineteenth century, Gavin Jones describes how the difficulties these writers faced in their faltering search for new styles, coherent characters and satisfactory endings uncovered experiences of blunder and inadequacy hidden in the culture at large. Through Jones's treatment, these American writers emerge as the great theorists of failure who discovered ways to translate their own social insecurities into complex portrayals of a modern self, founded in moral fallibility, precarious knowledge and negative feelings.
Add this copy of Failure and the American Writer: a Literary History to cart. $33.07, new condition, Sold by Revaluation Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Exeter, DEVON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2014 by Cambridge Univ Pr.
Add this copy of Failure and the American Writer: a Literary History to cart. $34.12, new condition, Sold by Revaluation Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Exeter, DEVON, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2014 by Cambridge Univ Pr.
