Ebook: Reading the American Novel 1920-2010

This astute guide to the literary achievements of American novelists in the twentieth century places their work in its historical context and offers detailed analyses of landmark novels based on a clearly laid out set of tools for analyzing narrative form.

• Includes a valuable overview of twentieth- and early twenty-first century American literary history
• Provides analyses of numerous core texts including The Great Gatsby, Invisible Man, The Sound and the Fury, The Crying of Lot 49 and Freedom
• Relates these individual novels to the broader artistic movements of modernism and postmodernism
• Explains and applies key principles of rhetorical reading
• Includes numerous cross-novel comparisons and contrasts 

 

 

Content:
Chapter 1 Principles of Rhetorical Reading (pages 23–38):
Chapter 2 The Age of Innocence (1920): Bildung and the Ethics of Desire (pages 39–60):
Chapter 3 The Great Gatsby (1925): Character Narration, Temporal Order, and Tragedy (pages 61–83):
Chapter 4 A Farewell to Arms (1929): Bildung, Tragedy, and the Rhetoric of Voice (pages 85–104):
Chapter 5 The Sound and the Fury (1929): Portrait Narrative as Tragedy (pages 105–126):
Chapter 6 Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937): Bildung and the Rhetoric and Politics of Voice (pages 127–147):
Chapter 7 Invisible Man (1952): Bildung, Politics, and Rhetorical Design (pages 149–169):
Chapter 8 Lolita (1955): The Ethics of the Telling and the Ethics of the Told (pages 171–192):
Chapter 9 The Crying of Lot 49 (1966): Mimetic Protagonist, Thematic–Synthetic Storyworld (pages 193–211):
Chapter 10 Beloved (1987): Sethe's Choice and Morrison's Ethical Challenge (pages 213–235):
Chapter 11 Freedom (2010): Realism after Postmodernism (pages 237–259):