Realism and Naturalism : The Novel in an Age of Transition
Editorial Reviews
Review
"It is the most important work in the history of such studies, the culmination of a life's work on the subject by a scholar and a writer well-known in the field of American literature and American Realism and Naturalism."—Jerome Loving, Texas A&M University
"Lehan's book is at once an introduction to and interpretation of late nineteenth-century realism and naturalism as a world-wide literary movement with deep roots in the social and intellectual currents of its historical moment. As an introduction, its coverage and analysis are superb and without parallel. No critic I know of possesses Lehan's range of knowledge of the British, American and Continental phases of the movement . . . And few possess his capacity . . . to analyze clearly and incisively often complex and abstract literary, philosophical, and social issues."-Donald Pizer, Tulane University
Book Description
Lehan's book provides readers with an illuminating and readable comprehensive intellectual and literary history of the major American, British, and Continental novels of Realism and Naturalism from 1850 to 1950. He offers readers a new way of reading these novels-working outward from the text to forms of historical representation. In this way, literary naturalism can be seen as a narrative mode that creates its own reality separate from that of other narrative modes. Employing this strategy, Lehan contends, readers will find a spectrum of meaning in these works that allows and encourages intertextuality-one novel talking or responding to another-for example, Zola's Nana to Dreiser's Sister Carrie or Zola's L'Assomoir to Sinclair's The Jungle.
The range of novelists and sub genres is staggering-Lehan studies the gothic novel, the urban novel, the detective novel, the novel of imperial adventure, the western novel, the noir novel, and the novels of utopia and distopia.
Realism and Naturalism : The Novel in an Age of Transition
Realism and Naturalism : The Novel in an Age of Transition,Richard Lehan,University of Wisconsin Press,0299208745,19th century,20th century,Fiction,Fiction - General,General,History and criticism,Literary Criticism,Popular Culture - General,Realism in literature,Social Science / Popular Culture
Realism and Naturalism : The Novel in an Age of Transition
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