Hard Facts: Setting and Form in the American Novel - Hardcover

Fisher, Philip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195035283 ISBN 13: 9780195035285

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1985

Synopsis

In this study of the popular 19th and early 20th century novel, the author analyzes the texts and forms of four key works -- Cooper's The Deerslayer, Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Dreiser's Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy -- exploring how these works reflected the central social and cultural concerns of the age.

About this title

About the Author

Philip Fisher is at Brandeis University.

Review

"Fisher makes striking observations about the cultural function of literature....[His] readings are based on a deep knowledge of literary and social theory, and he manages to make the theory his own. The result is a form of historical criticism that reformulates familiar subjects (the wilderness, the homestead, the city) so as to raise a wholly new set of questions."--Western Humanities Review

"The study of American fiction of the 19th century has long been a business of reclamation.... Fisher's fascinating extension of this campaign in his treatment of Cooper and Stowe draws partly on previous pioneering efforts like Leslie A. Fiedler's Love and Death in the American Novel and Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden, and in its probing at the guilty root of the national culture it deserves to be placed alongside them, as classic American criticism."--Times Literary Supplement

"A key text for anyone interested in theories of the novel, the nature of American fiction, or the dynamics of cultural history."-Library Journal

"An essential book for all readers of the American novel."--Antioch Review

"Bound to become required reading for anyone interested in American fiction and its relation to American culture."--Modern Language Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1985
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195035283
• ISBN 13: 9780195035285
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 200