The center of the world : regional writing and the puzzles of place-time / June Howard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Howard, June, author.

Series:

Oxford studies in American literary history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Regionalism in literature.

Communities in literature.

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

American literature.

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

American literature--21st century--History and criticism.

Literature and society--United States--History.

Literature and society.

History.

United States.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xix, 256 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color); 25 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Regional Writing and the Puzzles of Place-Time is a study of literary regionalism. It focuses on the fiction of the United States and considers the place of the genre in world literature. Regionalism is usually understood to be a literature bound to the local, but this study explores how regional writing shapes ways of imagining not only the neighborhood or the province, but also the nation, and ultimately the world. Its key premise is that thinking about place always entails imagining time. It analyzes how concepts crystallize across disciplines and in everyday discourse and proposes ways of revising American literary history and close readings of particular authors' work. It demonstrates, for example, the importance of the figure of the school-teacher and the one-room schoolhouse in local color and subsequent place-focused writing. Such representations embody the contested relation in modernity between localities and the knowledge they produce, and books that carry metropolitan and cosmopolitan learning. The volume discusses fiction from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, including works by Sui Sin Far/Edith Eaton, Sarah Orne Jewett, Ernest Gaines, Wendell Berry, and Ursula LeGuin as well as romance novels and regional mysteries.

Contents:

1 From the Ground Up: Thinking about Location and Literature p. 1

2 Local Knowledge and Book-Learning: Placing the Teacher in Regional Story-Telling p. 48

3 The Unexpected Jewett p. 97

4 World-Making Words p. 121 / Edith Eaton and Sui Sin Far

5 Regionalisms Now p. 161.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-244) and index.

ISBN:

9780198821397

0198821395

OCLC:

1044553272