Table of Contents
Notes on Contributors ix
Preface xix
Acknowledgments xxi
A Chronology of the American Novel xxii
Part I: Historical Developments 1
1 The Development of the American Novel: The Transformations of Genre 3 Alfred Bendixen
2 The American Novel: Beginnings Through the American Renaissance 19 Maria Karafilis
3 The American Novel: Realism and Naturalism (1860–1920) 42 Jeanne Campbell Reesman
4 Modernism and the American Novel 60 Peter L. Hays
5 Beyond Modernism: The American Novel Between the World Wars 76 Alfred Bendixen
6 The Cold War Novel: The American Novel Between 1945–1970 90 Sharon Becker and Wendy Martin
7 The Novel in a Changing America: Multiculturalism and Other Issues (1970–Present) 109 Martha J. Cutter
Part II: Genres and Traditions 127
8 Fear, Ambiguity, and Transgression: The Gothic Novel in the United States 129 Charles L. Crow
9 The American Historical Romance: From James Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, and E. L. Doctorow 147 Emily Miller Budick
10 Making This Whole Nation Feel: The Sentimental Novel in the United States 170 Marianne Noble
11 Social Protest, Reform, and the American Political Novel 187 Chip Rhodes
12 The American War Novel Tradition and the Individual Soldier 206 James H. Meredith
13 From the Sublime to the Ridiculous: Comic Traditions in the American Novel 218 Judith Yaross Lee
14 Plotting a Way Home: The Jewish American Novel 241 Derek Parker Royal
15 Chicano/a Traditions in the American Novel 259 Juan J. Alonzo
16 African American Traditions and the American Novel 274 Melvin Donalson
17 The American Novel of Mystery, Crime, and Detection 291 Leonard Cassuto
18 O Brave New Worlds: Science Fiction and the American Novel 309 Eric S. Rabkin
19 Dreaming of a White Future: Mary E. Bradley Lane, Edward Bellamy, and the Origins of the Utopian Novel in the United States 323 Jean Pfaelzer
20 Queer Theory and the American Novel 342 Deborah Carlin
21 The American Short-Story Cycle: Out From the Novel’s Shadow 357 Robert M. Luscher
Part III: Major Texts 373
22 The Woman’s Law in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter 375 Monika Elbert
23 Writ in Water: The Books of Melville’s Moby-Dick 394 Wyn Kelley
24 Wonder of Wonders: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin 408 Susan Belasco
25 Citational Strategies and Literary Traditions: Placing Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady 422 Greg W. Zacharias
26 Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Child’s Search for Comfort and Peace 443 Michael J. Kiskis
27 What Women Want: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening 454 Emily Toth
28 Private Fleming’s Various Battles: Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage 465 James Nagel
29 Lily’s Story: Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth 475 Kathy Fedorko
30 The Confessional Narration of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises 488 James Nagel
31 Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and the Myth of the Land 499 Richard Lehan
32 Ground Zero: Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury 510 Philip Weinstein
33 A Bigger Vision: Richard Wright’s Native Son and the Great American Novel 525 Andrew Warnes
34 Our Invisible Man: The Aesthetic Genealogy of US Diversity 537 John Carlos Rowe
35 The Visionary Exuberance of Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March 554 Ben Siegel
36 The Flesh and the Word: Toni Morrison’s Beloved 570 Valerie Smith
37 A Different Kind of Love Story: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road 582 Olivia Carr Edenfield
Selected Readings in the Genres of the American Novel 598
Index 610