Nothing abstract : investigations in the American literary imagination / Tom Quirk.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Quirk, Tom, 1946- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

Imagination.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (246 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Columbia, Missouri ; London, [England] : University of Missouri Press, 2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Written by one of the leading scholars in the field, Nothing Abstract is a collection of essays gathered over the past twenty years -- all of which, in some fashion, have to do with a genetic approach to literary study. In previous books, the author has traced the compositional histories of certain literary works, the course of individual careers, and the genesis of literary movements. In this book, Tom Quirk resists the direction taken by contemporary theory in favor of an approach to literature through source and influence study, the evolution of a writer's achievement, the establishment of biographical or other contexts, and the transition from one literary era to another.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgments

I Introduction

II Sources, Influences, and Intertexts

The Single-Source/ Double-Reaction Source-Influence Symptom

The Chain-Letter Source-Influence Symptom

The Great-Books/ Little-Occasions Source-Influence Symptom

The "Them Are My Squirrels!" Source-Influence Symptom

The One-More-Time-with-Feeling Source- Influence Symptom

The It's-in-the-Text Source-Influence Symptom

III Authors, Intentions, and Texts

IV What If Poe's Humorous Tales Were Funny? Poe's "X-ing a Paragrab" and Twain's "Journalism in Tennessee

V HawthorneÌs Last Tales and "The Custom-House

VI The Judge Dragged to the Bar Melville, Shaw, and the Webster Murder Trial

The Crime

The Case

The Aftermath

The Afterthought

VII Mark Twain in His Short Works

VIII The Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce

IX Realism, the "Real," and the Poet of Reality Some Reflections on American Realists and the Poetry of Wallace Stevens

I

II

X In the Shallow Light of the Present The Moral Geography of Death Comes for the Archbishop

III

XI Fitzgerald and Cather The Great Gatsby

XII A Source for ÏWhere Are You Going, Where Have You Been?Ó

XIII Justice on the Reservation Tony HillermanÌs Novels and the Conflict between Federal and Tribal Jurisdiction

XIV The Trying Out of Genetic Inquiry

A Checklist of Publications

Index.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-8262-6308-9

OCLC:

179110183