Claims and speculations : mining and writing in the Gilded Age / Janet Floyd.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Floyd, Janet.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

Mines and mineral resources in literature.

Mineralogy in literature.

Miners in literature.

Physical Description:

xii, 184 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press, 2012.

Summary:

Janet Floyd (American studies, King's College, London, UK) looks at how "gold-rush" settings have been reflected in American high and popular arts, and what these works have to say about US cultures: of miners, artists, writers, and readers. This study looks at both popular and literary books set in and responding to the metal strikes in the American West between 1865 and 1905. Floyd also brings in visual art, as well as related mining cultures (such as Australian "mate" communities), but restricts this study to works produced in the gold-rush era. Though it is written as a work of academic scholarship, the book's prose is as skillful as many works of popular nonfiction. For this reason it will appeal to a readership beyond special-interest scholars in the subject. As a writer on literature, she cautions against making any theoretical argument that denies the range of human beings and motives in the American West. She explores the complex and multifaceted situations reflected both by gold-rush communities, and by the works of their own era that used them as their setting. Her own analyses reflect but cannot be reduced to a background in women's studies. Throughout, the author considers the idea that the people, the art, and the attitudes of the frontier's toughest places are more slippery than either liberal or conservative scholars have liked to imagine. Recommended both for its prose and its interest in the actual lives and cultures reflected in literary studies. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 160-179) and index.

ISBN:

9780826351395

0826351395

9780826351418

0826351417

OCLC:

793099486