New essays on the Rise of Silas Lapham / edited by Donald E. Pease.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Pease, Donald E., editor.

Series:

American Novel.

The American novel

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920. Rise of Silas Lapham.

Howells, William Dean.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 132 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) established William Dean Howells's reputation in the annals of American literature. This collection of essays, first published in 1991, argues the renewed importance of Howells's novel for an understanding of literature as a social force as well as a literary form. In his introduction Donald Pease recounts the fall and rise of the novel's value in literary history, outlines the various critical responses to Silas Lapham, and restores the novel to its social context. The essays that follow expand on this theme, challenging the accepted views of literary critics by explicating narrative methods and the genre of literary realism. Focusing much of its attention on economics of morality, manners, and pain, as well as the marketplace, the volume as a whole argues that a relationship exists between Howells's realism and its socioeconomic context.

Contents:

Helpless longing, or, the lesson of Silas Lapham / Paul A. Bove ́

The hole in Howells

the lapse in Silas Lapham / John Seelye

The economy of pain : capitalism, humanitarianism, and the realistic novel / Wai-chee Dimock

Smiling through pain : the practice of self in The rise of Silas Lapham / Daniel T. O'Hara

The rise of Silas Lapham : the business of morals and manners / James M. Cox.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

0-511-87608-4

0-511-62450-6