Literature in Context

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Kovacs's essays aie quite interesting interventions in tte ^ discouise concerning the future of American Studies. [T]hese essays will also be of great service to specialists J
who would leam how to frame pertinent discussions of how conceptions of what professors and graduate students of literature used to mean by 'style' have changed and been expanded, and wiH continue to change and expand within the disciplines and methodologies diat make up the New American Studies. Jack Roberts, STA College, NY
Liteiatuie ia Context Reading Axnedcan Novels is a collection of essays that introduces students to major disciplinary and methodological problems of studying American literatuie' today. It discusses changes of the field of American studies in a set of brief historical surveys and then focuses on recent strategies of reading literature in cultural context in more detail. Yet the novels analyzed form no general suivey of American literary history. Rather, they provide examples of... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Kovacs's essays aie quite interesting interventions in tte ^ discouise concerning the future of American Studies. [T]hese essays will also be of great service to specialists J
who would leam how to frame pertinent discussions of how conceptions of what professors and graduate students of literature used to mean by 'style' have changed and been expanded, and wiH continue to change and expand within the disciplines and methodologies diat make up the New American Studies. Jack Roberts, STA College, NY
Liteiatuie ia Context Reading Axnedcan Novels is a collection of essays that introduces students to major disciplinary and methodological problems of studying American literatuie' today. It discusses changes of the field of American studies in a set of brief historical surveys and then focuses on recent strategies of reading literature in cultural context in more detail. Yet the novels analyzed form no general suivey of American literary history. Rather, they provide examples of themes and issues that have been challenging scholars lately, and also offer an insight into the hermeneutics of Uteiaiy response.
The book introduces woik by Americanists from New Criticism to Cultural Studies: from F. R. Leavis and Lionel Trilling through Paul de Man, Geoffrey Haitmann and Heinz Ickstadt to Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Shiiley Geok-lin Lim, Sacvan Bercovitch, Vincent B. Leitch. It focuses on the consequences of disciplinary debates and changes of strategies of reading mainly in the aiea of Modernist and contemporary American fiction. It covers work by authors as diverse as Henry James, Edith Whaiton, Toni Momson, Sandra Cisneios, Cristina Garcia, and even digresses to include the Irish Colm Toibin. It points out thematic connections and continuity in the reading of fiction today through concepts like race, dass, gender, history, hybridity, culture. A resource for students and teachers, this book will also appeal to those interested in modem literature and culture.
A. Zs. Kovács is senior assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Szeged, Hungary. She holds her Ph.D. in English from the same university, and is the author of The Function of the Imagination in Henry James: The Production of a Civilized Experience (Mellen Press, 2006). Vissza