The Midwestern Ascendancy in American Writing (Midwestern History and Culture) - Hardcover

Weber, Ronald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253363667 ISBN 13: 9780253363664

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1992

Synopsis

"... thoughtful, engaging... [Weber’s] kind of literary history succeeds where the more fashionable kind often fails: It sends the reader back to the books themselves." —The Bloomsbury Review

"Weber... completes an important chapter in a literary history that closes with the advent of modernism... " —American Literature

"... well-written, balanced, and extraordinarily sure-footed account... " —The Annals of Iowa

"... this book is a must for scholars of American literature and regional culture at all levels and for general readers as well." —Choice

"... a fascinating account of the Midwest’s literary day in the sun." —Michigan Historical Review

"[Weber’s] prose is lucid, cogent, engaging. And his insights into the problems of regionalism, the creations of the midwestern movement, and the places and people of the midwestern tapestry bring a new coherence to this neglected literature." —Joseph F. Trimmer

From the 1870s to the 1920s, Midwestern writers were at the center of American literature. Here Weber illuminates the sense of lost promise that gives rise to the elegiac note struck in many Midwestern works; he also addresses the deeply divided feeling about the region revealed in the contrary desires to abandon and to celebrate.

About this title

About the Author:

RONALD WEBER, Professor of American studies at Notre Dame, is the author of The Literature of Fact; Seeing Earth: Literary Responses to Space Exploration; and Hemingway’s Art of Nonfiction.

From Library Journal:

The thesis of this succinct interpretation of Midwestern writing's brief heyday between the decline of the New England tradition and the rise of the Southern in the 1920s is that its major writers, from Garland to Rolvaag, created works of lasting value from their conflicting views of the region as at once a fallen Eden, narrow and blighting, and the nation's sane moral center with a heroic, pioneering past. Devoting whole chapters to Garland, Dreiser, Anderson, Cather, Lewis, and Rolvaag, Weber (American studies, Univ. of Notre Dame) nonetheless mentions even the most peripheral Midwesterners. Although no startlingly new ideas are found here--and the organization sometimes suffers from the author's tendency to dart from writer to writer--the book is solidly researched and would be serviceable in any library.
- Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, Mo.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0253363667
• ISBN 13: 9780253363664
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288