The dream of the great American novel / Lawrence Buell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Buell, Lawrence, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

National characteristics, American, in literature.

Literature and society--United States--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

United States--In literature.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (584 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The first book in many years to take in the full sweep of national fiction, The Dream of the Great American Novel explains why this supposedly antiquated idea continues to thrive. It shows that four G.A.N. "scripts" are keys to the dynamics of American literature and identity--and to the myth of a nation perpetually under construction.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction

PART ONE THE UNKILLABLE DREAM

1. Birth, Heyday, and Seeming Decline

2. Reborn from the Critical Ashes

PART TWO. SCRIPT ONE: MADE CLASSIC BY RETELLING

3. The Reluctant Master Text

PART THREE. SCRIPT TWO: ASPIRATION IN AMERICA

4. "Success" Stories from Franklin to the Dawn of Modernism

5. Belated Ascendancy: Fitzgerald to Faulkner, Dreiser to Wright and Bellow

6. Up- From Narrative in Hyphenated America: Ellison, Roth, and Beyond

PART FOUR. SCRIPT THREE: ROMANCING THE DIVIDES

7. Uncle Tom's Cabin and Its Aftermaths

8. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Its Others

9. Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, and Literary Interracialism North and South

10. Morrison's Beloved as Culmination and Augury

PART FIVE. SCRIPT FOUR: IMPROBABLE COMMUNITIES

11. Moby- Dick: From Oblivion to Great American Novel

12. The Great American Novel of Twentieth- Century Breakdown: Dos Passos's U.S.A.- or Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath?

13. Late Twentieth- Century Maximalism: Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow- and Its Rainbow

Epilogue

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780674727489

0674727487

9780674726321

0674726324

OCLC:

1002274090