San Antonio College Library

"Sponsored by the American Literature Section of the Modern Language Association". Previous ed. edited by F. Stovall. Includes bibliographies.

Describes American society at the end of the nineteenth century in terms of the new writers whose real influence was not felt until years later.

Nebraska in the 1880s: bleak, lonely, and far from what you'd expect the Wild West to be. But for a naïve Swedish immigrant (David Warner), the frontier parlor of The Blue Hotel represents the quintessential Western fantasy. No one can convince The Swede that his dime-store notions about the West are foolish. He sees murderous intentions all around him, and in his terror he turns everybody against him. Inevitably the Swede attracts tragedy. However,...

This volume in the Critical Insights series presents a variety of new essays on the perennial theme. For readers who are studying it for the first time, four essays survey the critical conversation regarding the theme, explore its cultural and historical contexts, and offer close and comparative readings of key texts in the genre. Readers seeking a deeper understanding of the theme can then move on to other essays that explore it in depth through...

"Vanishing Moments analyzes how various American authors have reified class through their writing, from the first influx of industrialism in the 1850s to the end of the Great Depression in the early 1940s. Eric Schocket uses this history to document America's long engagement with the problem of class stratification and demonstrates how deeply America's desire to deny the presence of class has marked even its most labor-conscious cultural texts. Schocket...