Literary Criticism : American

The myths and legends in this book have been selected both for their excellence as stories and because they illustrate the distinctive nature of Native American storytelling.:.; A collection of Native American myths and legends.; Selected for their excellence as stories, and because they illustrate the distinctive nature of Native American storytelling.; Drawn from the oral traditions of all major areas of aboriginal North America.; Reveals the highly practical functions of myths and legends in Native American societies.; Illustrates American Indians’ profound engagement with their natural environment.; Edited by an outstanding interpreter of Native American oral stories. more...

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The term utopia implies both “good place” and “nowhere.” Since Sir Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516, debates about utopian models of society have sought to understand the implications of these somewhat contradictory definitions. In Notes on Nowhere, author Jennifer Burwell uses a cross-section of contemporary feminist science fiction to examine the political and literary meaning of utopian writing and utopian thought. Burwell provides close readings of the science fiction novels of five feminist writers—Marge Piercy, Sally Gearhart, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, and Monique Wittig—and poses questions central to utopian writing: Do these texts promote a tradition in which narratives of the ideal society have been used to hide rather than reveal violence, oppression, and social divisions? Can a feminist critical utopia offer a departure from this tradition by using utopian narratives to expose contradiction and struggle as central aspects of the utopian impulse? What implications do these questions have for those who wish to retain the utopian impulse for emancipatory political uses?As one way of answering these questions, Burwell compares two “figures” that inform utopian writing and social theory. The first is the traditional abstract “revolutionary” subject who contradicts existing conditions and who points us to the ideal body politic. The second, “resistant,” subject is partial, concrete, and produced by conditions rather than operating outside of them. In analyzing contemporary changes in the subject’s relationship to social space, Burwell draws from and revises “standpoint approaches” that tie visions of social transformation to a group’s position within existing conditions. By exploring the dilemmas, antagonisms, and resolutions within the critical literary feminist utopia, Burwell creates connections to a similar set of problems and resolutions characterizing “nonliterary” discourses of social transformation such as feminism, gay and lesbian studies, and Marxi more...

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The People and the Word explores how the Native tradition of nonfiction has both encompassed and dissected Native experiences. Robert Warrior traces a history of American Indian nonfiction writing, including Pequot intellectual William Apess's autobiographical works; the Osage Constitution of 1881; accounts of boarding school in the late 1880s; and modern Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday's essay “The Man Made of Words.” more...

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F Scott Fitzgerald is widely praised as the finest and most celebrated novelist of twentieth century America. His reputation is infinitely more lustrous since his untimely death than it was for much of his twenty-year literary career and is largely based on his 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, as well as on the colourful and tragic incidents of his personal life. His alcoholism; his fairy tale marriage to the beautiful Zelda Sayre, and her gradual descent into schizophrenia; the incandescent blossoming and dissipation of his literary gifts have all added to his legend. This Pocket Essentials examines both Fitzgerald’s life and writing and probes the infinitely complex and symbiotic relationship between the two, revealing the man behind the myth and behind some of the finest prose of all time. more...

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