tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-102152782024-03-08T12:40:02.565-08:00American Literature Site UpdatesUpdates to the American Authors, Literary Movements, and Brief Timeline pages as well as news and links about American literature before 1930.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.comBlogger213125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-48541768104231009982013-07-04T10:15:00.004-07:002015-05-26T21:08:28.599-07:00Blog is moving to http://donnamcampbell.wordpress.comI'm moving the American Literature Updates site to <a href="http://donnamcampbell.wordpress.com/">http://donnamcampbell.wordpress.com/</a>. At that site, I plan to post more frequently.<br />
<br />
<br />D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-32149570073256639372013-05-27T16:45:00.003-07:002013-05-27T16:45:55.532-07:00Links on Wharton Society pageThe links to the short stories are now correct: <a href="http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/wharton/shortstories.htm">http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/wharton/shortstories.htm</a>D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-88134473468823307552013-05-03T09:15:00.002-07:002013-05-03T09:15:49.302-07:00Willa Cather Letters<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/books/willa-cather-letters-to-be-published-as-an-anthology.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/books/willa-cather-letters-to-be-published-as-an-anthology.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<h1 class="articleHeadline" itemprop="headline" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 2.4em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.083em; margin: 0px 0px 8px; text-align: left;">
<nyt_headline type=" " version="1.0">O Revelations! Letters, Once Banned, Flesh Out Willa Cather</nyt_headline></h1>
<nyt_byline style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 15px; text-align: left;"></nyt_byline><br />
<h6 class="byline" style="color: grey; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 2px 0px;">
By <span itemprop="author creator" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">JENNIFER SCHUESSLER</span></h6>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 15px; text-align: left;"></span><br />
<h6 class="dateline" style="background-color: white; color: grey; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">
Published: March 21, 2013</h6>
<div class="articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 15px; margin-bottom: 1.7em; margin-top: 1.5em; text-align: left;">
<span itemid="http://www.nytimes.com" itemprop="copyrightHolder provider sourceOrganization" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization"></span><nyt_text><nyt_correction_top></nyt_correction_top></nyt_text><br />
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em;">
For decades <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/willa_cather/index.html?8qa" style="color: #666699;" title="Cather Topics Page">Willa Cather</a> has been a peculiar enigma in 20th-century American literature: beloved by ordinary readers for vivid evocations of frontier life in novels like “O Pioneers!” and “My Antonia,” but walled off from closer personal scrutiny by some of the tightest archival restrictions this side of J. D. Salinger.</div>
</div>
<div class="articleInline runaroundLeft" style="background-color: white; clear: left; color: #333333; display: inline; float: left; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 15px; margin: 6px 15px 10px 0px !important; text-align: left; width: 190px;">
<div class="inlineImage module" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 12px; width: 190px;">
<div class="image" style="margin-bottom: 2px;">
<div class="icon enlargeThis" style="background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; margin-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 16px; text-align: right;">
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/books/willa-cather-letters-to-be-published-as-an-anthology.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" style="background-image: url(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/icons/multimedia/enlarge_icon.gif); background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #666699; display: inline; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; padding-left: 15px; text-decoration: none;">Enlarge This Image</a></div>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/books/willa-cather-letters-to-be-published-as-an-anthology.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" style="color: #666699; display: block; text-decoration: none;"><span itemid="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/03/22/arts/22CATHER/22CATHER-articleInline-v2.jpg" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject"><img alt="" height="325" itemprop="url" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/03/22/arts/22CATHER/22CATHER-articleInline-v2.jpg" style="border: none;" width="190" /></span></a></div>
<h6 class="credit" style="color: #909090; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.223em; margin: 0px 0px 3px; text-align: right;">
Philip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection, Archives and Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries</h6>
<div class="caption" style="color: #666666; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.2727em;">
Willa Cather</div>
</div>
<div class="columnGroup doubleRule" style="background-color: transparent; background-image: url(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/global/borders/doubleRule.gif); background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat no-repeat; border-width: 0px !important; clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 7px; padding-top: 12px; width: auto !important;">
<div class="story" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px;">
<h6 class="kicker" style="color: black; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4em; margin: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">
WILLA CATHER’S LETTERS: EXCERPTS</h6>
<h3 style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.133em; margin: 0px;">
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/books/willa-cathers-letters-excerpts.html?ref=books" style="color: #666699; text-decoration: none;">From Scaling Windmills to Literary Editor</a></h3>
<h6 class="byline" style="color: grey; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 2px 0px;">
</h6>
<div class="summary" style="font-size: 1.2em; line-height: 1.25em; margin-bottom: 5px;">
Excerpts from “The Selected Letters of Willa Cather,” edited by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout.</div>
<ul class="refer flush" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; list-style: none; margin: 2px 0px 0px; padding-left: 0px;">
<li style="background-image: none; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.182em; margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/books/willa-cathers-letters-excerpts.html" style="color: #666699; font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none;">Read the Excerpts »</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 15px; margin-bottom: 1.7em; margin-top: 1.5em; text-align: left;">
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
Cather was believed to have destroyed most of her letters and sternly ordered that her surviving correspondence never be published or quoted from, a wish her executors adhered to unbendingly, even as it fueled sometimes rancorous debate about her sexuality.</div>
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
But next month, nearly seven decades after Cather’s death in 1947, the doors of her interior life will be thrown open with the publication of <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/book/217597/the-selected-letters-of-willa-cather-by-willa-cather" style="color: #666699;" title="Publisher’s page for letters">“The Selected Letters of Willa Cather,”</a> an anthology of 566 of the roughly 3,000 letters that turned out to have survived, scattered in some 75 archives.</div>
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
For scholars it’s a major literary event, a chance at last to flesh out the understanding of a writer often seen as a remote bluestocking in big skirts and old-fashioned hats. Cather, the letters reveal, was a powerfully engaged literary businesswoman who corresponded with H. L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald and other notables of the day — and once playfully took those skirts off, as a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/books/willa-cathers-letters-excerpts.html" style="color: #666699;">charming youthful letter</a>recounts, to clamber down a windmill in a thunderstorm.</div>
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
The letters do not yield steamy intimate detail. But they do make clear that Cather’s primary emotional attachments were to women, while also laying to rest what the volume’s editors, in interviews, called a persistent urban legend: that of the fanatically secretive author eager to erase any record of shameful desire.</div>
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">
“There’s really no evidence for the idea that she wanted all her letters destroyed,” said Andrew Jewell, an associate professor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, who is an editor, with Janis Stout, of the new collection, published by Alfred A. Knopf. “It’s just one of those pieces of gossip that has taken hold in published scholarship.”</div>
</div>
D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-91480073657653373752013-01-01T11:44:00.002-08:002013-01-01T11:44:17.532-08:00Continuing updates to TimelineI'm updating the Timeline and Author pages, getting rid of old links and finding new sources. All the PicoSearch boxes (which didn't work) have now been replaced with Google Search.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-73168184217692610512012-12-28T17:21:00.005-08:002012-12-28T17:22:43.978-08:00Updates to 1750 page, Occom bibliography, and other early pagesI've been updating the <a href="http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/1751.htm">Timeline page for 1750-1799</a> and the associated author pages, including Samson Occom; I've added a bibliography for him at <a href="http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/occombib.htm">http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/occombib.htm</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-6905447338110712212012-11-05T07:51:00.002-08:002012-11-05T08:19:40.772-08:00Updates to Charlotte Perkins Gilman; other newsThe new issue of <i>Common-Place </i>has an essay on and a new chapter from Frances E. W. Harper's <i>Sowing and Reaping: </i><a href="http://common-place.org/vol-13/no-01/gardner/">http://common-place.org/vol-13/no-01/gardner/</a><br />
<br />
The <i>Moby-Dick </i>Big Read project is now up to "The Spirit-Spout." Visit this site for artwork, audio files, and commentary: <a href="http://patell.org/2012/11/moby-dick-big-read-day-51/">http://patell.org/2012/11/moby-dick-big-read-day-51/</a>.<br />
<br />
The Charlotte Perkins Gilman page (<a href="http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/gilman.html">http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/gilman.html</a>) has been updated to remove links to the now-locked University of Virginia etext archives. I will be updating all the pages to eliminate these links.<br />
<br />
Ralph Waldo Emerson page has been updated with new and update links. <a href="http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/emerson.htm">http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/emerson.htm</a>.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-80111550743959458942012-09-15T12:51:00.000-07:002012-09-15T12:51:58.850-07:00New novel by Claude McKay discovered<nyt_headline type=" " version="1.0"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/books/harlem-renaissance-novel-by-claude-mckay-is-discovered.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/books/harlem-renaissance-novel-by-claude-mckay-is-discovered.html</a></span></nyt_headline><nyt_headline type=" " version="1.0">New Novel of Harlem Renaissance Is Found</nyt_headline><br />
<nyt_byline style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10.399999618530273px; line-height: 15px;"><h6 class="byline" style="color: grey; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 2px 0px;">By <span itemid="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/felicia_r_lee/index.html" itemprop="creator" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/felicia_r_lee/index.html" rel="author" style="color: #666699; text-decoration: none;" title="More Articles by FELICIA R. LEE">FELICIA R. LEE</a></span></h6></nyt_byline><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10.399999618530273px; line-height: 15px;"></span><h6 class="dateline" style="background-color: white; color: grey; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px;">Published: September 14, 2012</h6><div class="articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10.399999618530273px; line-height: 15px; margin-bottom: 1.7em; margin-top: 1.5em;"><nyt_text><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em;">A Columbia graduate student and his adviser have authenticated the student’s discovery of an unknown manuscript of a 1941 novel by Claude McKay, a leading Harlem Renaissance writer and author of the first novel by a black American to become a best seller.</div></nyt_text></div><div class="articleInline runaroundLeft" style="background-color: white; clear: left; color: #333333; display: inline; float: left; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10.399999618530273px; line-height: 15px; margin: 6px 15px 10px 0px !important; width: 190px;"><div class="inlineImage module" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 12px; width: 190px;"><div class="image" style="margin-bottom: 2px;"><div class="icon enlargeThis" style="background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; margin-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 16px; text-align: right;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=10215278" style="background-image: url(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/icons/multimedia/enlarge_icon.gif); background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; color: #666699; display: inline; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; padding-left: 15px;">Enlarge This Image</a></div><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=10215278" style="color: #666699; display: block;"><span itemid="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/09/15/arts/MCKAY/MCKAY-articleInline.jpg" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject"><img alt="" height="295" itemprop="url" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/09/15/arts/MCKAY/MCKAY-articleInline.jpg" style="border: none;" width="190" /></span></a></div><h6 class="credit" style="color: #909090; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.223em; margin: 0px 0px 3px; text-align: right;">Corbis</h6><div class="caption" style="color: #666666; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.2727em;">The author Claude McKay in the 1920s.</div></div></div><div class="articleBody" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 10.399999618530273px; line-height: 15px; margin-bottom: 1.7em; margin-top: 1.5em;"><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The manuscript, “Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem,” was discovered in a previously untouched university archive and offers an unusual window on the ideas and events (like Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia) that animated Harlem on the cusp of <a class="meta-classifier" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/w/world_war_ii_/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" style="color: #666699;" title="More articles about Wold War II.">World War II</a>. The two scholars have received permission from the McKay estate to publish the novel, a satire set in 1936, with an introduction about how it was found and its provenance verified.</div><div itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/claude-mckay" style="color: #666699;" title="A short biography">McKay</a>, a Jamaican-born writer and political activist who died in 1948, at 58 (though some biographies say 57), influenced a generation of black writers, including Langston Hughes. His work includes the 1919 protest poem “If We Must Die,” (quoted by Winston Churchill) and “Harlem Shadows,” a 1922 poetry collection that some critics say ushered in the Harlem Renaissance. He also wrote the 1928 best-selling novel “Home to Harlem.” But his last published fiction during his lifetime was the 1933 novel “Banana Bottom.”</div></div><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 1.467em;">“This is a major discovery,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard University scholar, who was one of three experts called upon to examine the novel and supporting research. “It dramatically expands the canon of novels written by Harlem Renaissance writers and, obviously, novels by Claude McKay.</span>http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/books/harlem-renaissance-novel-by-claude-mckay-is-discovered.htmlD. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-61015587236706951882012-09-08T07:43:00.003-07:002012-09-08T07:46:47.438-07:00New picture of Emily DickinsonNew picture of Emily Dickinson Found:<br />
<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/2nd-photo-of-Emily-Dickinson-found-3849243.php">http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/2nd-photo-of-Emily-Dickinson-found-3849243.php</a><br />
<br />
See this article for more details: <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/05/emily-dickinson-new-photograph">http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/05/emily-dickinson-new-photograph</a>D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-23208954026528097772012-08-27T15:19:00.001-07:002012-08-27T15:19:23.480-07:00Blithedale Romance bibUpdates to the bibliography on <i><a href="http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/blithebib.htm">The Blithedale Romance.</a></i>D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-26772372119969047822012-05-22T10:40:00.003-07:002012-05-22T10:44:04.715-07:00Rebecca Harding Davis bibliography updatesI've updated the Rebecca Harding Davis bibliography at <a href="http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/davisrh.htm">http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/davisrh.htm</a> or <a href="http://www.donnamcampbell.org/amlit/davisrh.htm">http://www.donnamcampbell.org/amlit/davisrh.htm</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Incidentally, you can also get to the main site by going to <a href="http://www.donnamcampbell.org/">http://www.donnamcampbell.org</a>.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053274352075684989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-46391840082245040052012-02-29T23:17:00.003-08:002012-02-29T23:17:49.595-08:00Updates to pages and new search boxesI'm replacing the old PicoSearch search boxes with Google Custom Search. There will be ads (as there are with Pico), but you can limit your search to just the American Literature sites by using <b>amlit </b>as one of your search terms.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-34300699220544139912012-01-16T14:50:00.000-08:002012-01-16T14:50:12.213-08:00Update to the Frank Norris bibliographyUpdates to the Frank Norris bibliography, <a href="http://www.howellssociety.org/norrisnew.htm">http://www.howellssociety.org/norrisnew.htm</a>.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053274352075684989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-14992110904184813202011-11-12T21:41:00.001-08:002011-11-12T21:43:35.744-08:00Bibliographies and queries updatesUpdates to bibliographies and queries at the <a href="http://www.howellssociety.org/">Howells Society,</a> <a href="http://www.edithwhartonsociety.org/">Wharton Society</a>, and <a href="http://public.wsu.edu/%7Ecampbelld/crane/queries11.htm">Crane Society sites</a>.See especially Melissa Pennell's updates to the early bibliographies at the Wharton Society site .<br />
Updates to the Maria Cristina Mena bibliography: <a href="http://public.wsu.edu/%7Ecampbelld/amlit/menabib.htm">http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/menabib.htm</a>.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-84006653111188607022011-10-15T10:00:00.000-07:002011-10-15T10:00:34.153-07:00Updates to the Wharton Society siteI've created a New Books page for the Wharton Society site and have updated the bibliography and the queries pages. You can see them all at <a href="http://www.edithwhartonsociety.org/">http://www.edithwhartonsociety.org</a>.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053274352075684989noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-78254684156787841892011-09-07T09:46:00.000-07:002011-09-07T09:46:43.714-07:00University of Virginia Text Center files movedThere are a lot of links to the University of Virginia Text Center at the author society and American author sites, but most of the texts, which used to be freely available, have now been been incorporated into subscription databases and require a password.<br />
<br />
I'll be changing these links to free versions if I can find them, but it may take a while--sorry.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-88674030092949859362011-05-26T15:26:00.000-07:002011-05-26T15:26:30.638-07:00American literature sites back onlineThe American literature and author society web sites are back online. WSU has given them a domain name, although the old one will still work: http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld. D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-76106007210591692122011-05-26T03:57:00.000-07:002011-05-26T03:57:19.890-07:00American literature and author sites should be up by the weekendThe Washington State University server is still down in parts, so the American literature and other sites aren't accessible yet. They should be available by the weekend, according to WSU's IT department.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-31066126077163792422011-05-24T13:17:00.001-07:002011-05-24T13:47:04.811-07:00Naturalism in American Literature (alternate page until the Literary Movements site is available)<div class="MsoNormal">American Literary Naturalism</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The term naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. Unlike realism, which focuses on literary technique, naturalism implies a philosophical position: for naturalistic writers, since human beings are, in Emile Zola's phrase, "human beasts," characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings. Zola's 1880 description of this method in Le roman experimental (The Experimental Novel, 1880) follows Claude Bernard's medical model and the historian Hippolyte Taine's observation that "virtue and vice are products like vitriol and sugar"--that is, that human beings as "products" should be studied impartially, without moralizing about their natures. Other influences on American naturalists include Herbert Spencer and Joseph LeConte. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Through this objective study of human beings, naturalistic writers believed that the laws behind the forces that govern human lives might be studied and understood. Naturalistic writers thus used a version of the scientific method to write their novels; they studied human beings governed by their instincts and passions as well as the ways in which the characters' lives were governed by forces of heredity and environment. Although they used the techniques of accumulating detail pioneered by the realists, the naturalists thus had a specific object in mind when they chose the segment of reality that they wished to convey. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In George Becker's famous and much-annotated and contested phrase, naturalism's philosophical framework can be simply described as "pessimistic materialistic determinism." Another such concise definition appears in the introduction to American Realism: New Essays. In that piece,"The Country of the Blue," Eric Sundquist comments, "Revelling in the extraordinary, the excessive, and the grotesque in order to reveal the immutable bestiality of Man in Nature, naturalism dramatizes the loss of individuality at a physiological level by making a Calvinism without God its determining order and violent death its utopia" (13). </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A modified definition appears in Donald Pizer's Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction, Revised Edition (1984): </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">[T]he naturalistic novel usually contains two tensions or contradictions, and . . . the two in conjunction comprise both an interpretation of experience and a particular aesthetic recreation of experience. In other words, the two constitute the theme and form of the naturalistic novel. The first tension is that between the subject matter of the naturalistic novel and the concept of man which emerges from this subject matter. The naturalist populates his novel primarily from the lower middle class or the lower class. . . . His fictional world is that of the commonplace and unheroic in which life would seem to be chiefly the dull round of daily existence, as we ourselves usually conceive of our lives. But the naturalist discovers in this world those qualities of man usually associated with the heroic or adventurous, such as acts of violence and passion which involve sexual adventure or bodily strength and which culminate in desperate moments and violent death. A naturalistic novel is thus an extension of realism only in the sense that both modes often deal with the local and contemporary. The naturalist, however, discovers in this material the extraordinary and excessive in human nature. The second tension involves the theme of the naturalistic novel. The naturalist often describes his characters as though they are conditioned and controlled by environment, heredity, instinct, or chance. But he also suggests a compensating humanistic value in his characters or their fates which affirms the significance of the individual and of his life. The tension here is that between the naturalist's desire to represent in fiction the new, discomfiting truths which he has found in the ideas and life of his late nineteenth-century world, and also his desire to find some meaning in experience which reasserts the validity of the human enterprise. (10-11)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For further definitions, see also The Cambridge Guide to American Realism and Naturalism, Charles Child Walcutt's American Literary Naturalism: A Divided Stream, June Howard's Form and History in American Literary Naturalism, Walter Benn Michaels's The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism, Lee Clark Mitchell's Determined Fictions, Mark Selzer's Bodies and Machines, and other works from the naturalism bibliography. See Lars Ahnebrink, Richard Lehan, and Louis J. Budd for information on the intellectual European and American backgrounds of naturalism.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Characters. Frequently but not invariably ill-educated or lower-class characters whose lives are governed by the forces of heredity, instinct, and passion. Their attempts at exercising free will or choice are hamstrung by forces beyond their control; social Darwinism and other theories help to explain their fates to the reader. See June Howard's Form and History for information on the spectator in naturalism. Setting. Frequently an urban setting, as in Norris's McTeague. See Lee Clark Mitchell's Determined Fictions, Philip Fisher's Hard Facts, and James R. Giles's The Naturalistic Inner-City Novel in America. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Techniques and plots. Walcutt says that the naturalistic novel offers "clinical, panoramic, slice-of-life" drama that is often a "chronicle of despair" (21). The novel of degeneration--Zola's L'Assommoir and Norris's Vandover and the Brute, for example--is also a common type.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">1.Walcutt identifies survival, determinism, violence, and taboo as key themes. 2. The "brute within" each individual, composed of strong and often warring emotions: passions, such as lust, greed, or the desire for dominance or pleasure; and the fight for survival in an amoral, indifferent universe. The conflict in naturalistic novels is often "man against nature" or "man against himself" as characters struggle to retain a "veneer of civilization" despite external pressures that threaten to release the "brute within." </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">3. Nature as an indifferent force acting on the lives of human beings. The romantic vision of Wordsworth--that "nature never did betray the heart that loved her"--here becomes Stephen Crane's view in "The Open Boat": "This tower was a giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual--nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent." </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">4. The forces of heredity and environment as they affect--and afflict--individual lives. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">5. An indifferent, deterministic universe. Naturalistic texts often describe the futile attempts of human beings to exercise free will, often ironically presented, in this universe that reveals free will as an illusion.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Frank Norris </div><div class="MsoNormal">Theodore Dreiser </div><div class="MsoNormal">Jack London </div><div class="MsoNormal">Stephen Crane </div><div class="MsoNormal">Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905) </div><div class="MsoNormal">Ellen Glasgow, Barren Ground (1925) </div><div class="MsoNormal">John Dos Passos (1896-1970), U.S.A. trilogy (1938): The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936) </div><div class="MsoNormal">James T. Farrell (1904-1979), Studs Lonigan (1934) </div><div class="MsoNormal">John Steinbeck (1902-1968), The Grapes of Wrath (1939) </div><div class="MsoNormal">Richard Wright, Native Son (1940), Black Boy (1945) </div><div class="MsoNormal">Norman Mailer (1923-2007), The Naked and the Dead (1948) </div><div class="MsoNormal">William Styron, Lie Down in Darkness (1951) </div><div class="MsoNormal">Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953) </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Other writers sometimes identified as naturalists: </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Nelson Algren, The Man with the Golden Arm</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (1919)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Harriet Arnow, The Dollmaker (1954) </div><div class="MsoNormal">Ambrose Bierce</div><div class="MsoNormal">Abraham Cahan, The Making of an American Citizen</div><div class="MsoNormal">Kate Chopin, The Awakening </div><div class="MsoNormal">Rebecca Harding Davis</div><div class="MsoNormal">Don DeLillo </div><div class="MsoNormal">Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Sport of the Gods </div><div class="MsoNormal">Edward Eggleston, The Hoosier School-Master</div><div class="MsoNormal">William Faulkner</div><div class="MsoNormal">Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Henry Blake Fuller, The Cliff-Dwellers</div><div class="MsoNormal">Hamlin Garland, Rose of Dutcher's Coolly </div><div class="MsoNormal">Robert Herrick, The Memoirs of an American Citizen (1905)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Ernest Hemingway</div><div class="MsoNormal">E. W. Howe, The Story of a Country Town</div><div class="MsoNormal">Joseph Kirkland, </div><div class="MsoNormal">Joyce Carol Oates </div><div class="MsoNormal">David Graham Phillips</div><div class="MsoNormal">Hubert Selby, Jr. </div><div class="MsoNormal">Upton Sinclair, The Jungle</div><div class="MsoNormal">When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. </div><div class="MsoNormal">--Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat" A man said to the universe: </div><div class="MsoNormal">"Sir, I exist!" </div><div class="MsoNormal">"However," replied the universe, </div><div class="MsoNormal">"The fact has not created in me </div><div class="MsoNormal">A sense of obligation." --Stephen Crane (1894, 1899)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"> © 1997-2011. Donna M. Campbell. Some information adapted from Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885-1915 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997). </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To cite this page on a Works Cited page according to current MLA guidelines, supply the correct dates and use the suggested format below. If you are quoting another author quoted on this page, either look up the original source or indicate that original quotation is cited on ("Qtd. in") this page. The following is drawn from the examples and guidelines in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th ed. (2009), section 5.6.2.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Campbell, Donna M. "Naturalism in American Literature. " Literary Movements. Dept. of English, Washington State University. Date of publication or most recent update (listed above as the "last modified" date; you don't need to indicate the time). Web. Date you accessed the page. </div>D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-26722592906430553482011-05-24T12:14:00.000-07:002011-05-24T12:14:17.603-07:00Web outage at www.wsu.edu should be repaired by 5/27/11There are still significant outages at the WSU web site and hence all the American literature and author society pages, despite the incorrect "no outages" message on the IT web page: <a href="HTTP://infotech.wsu.edu/netops/NetStatus/Default.aspx">HTTP://infotech.wsu.edu/netops/NetStatus/Default.aspx</a>. The IT department has said that these pages should be back online by 5/27/11. Again, I'm sorry for the inconvenience.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-82037225039940252712011-05-23T06:47:00.000-07:002011-05-23T06:48:59.952-07:00WSU main web site still is down, affecting American lit web pagesThe Washington State University web site was offline for server upgrades over the weekend, and although the <a href="http://infotech.wsu.edu/netops/NetStatus/Default.aspx">main page says that there are no outages</a>, the IT department says that faculty web pages are still down and will be back up "later today or in a few days." In other words, the American lit web pages and author society pages are down but should be available soon. <br />
<br />
Sorry for the inconvenience.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-64679214716884564802011-04-14T09:17:00.001-07:002011-04-14T09:17:25.973-07:00Updates to Mary Austin bibliographyUpdates to the Mary Austin bibliography:<br />
<a href="http://www.wsu.edu/%7Ecampbelld/amlit/austinbib.htm">http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/austinbib.htm</a>D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-48834142321393527012011-04-12T12:33:00.000-07:002011-04-12T12:33:05.899-07:00New Whitman papers discovered<a href="http://newsroom.unl.edu/releases/2011/04/12/UNL+scholar+discovers+thousands+of+new+Walt+Whitman+papers">http://newsroom.unl.edu/releases/2011/04/12/UNL+scholar+discovers+thousands+of+new+Walt+Whitman+papers</a><br />
<br />
UNL scholar discovers thousands of new Walt Whitman papers<br />
<br />
As a clerk in the U.S. Attorney General's Office in the 1860s and 1870s, Walt Whitman had a firsthand view of the legal, cultural and ideological challenges facing the nation after the Civil War. That experience, most believe, shaped his later works of poetry and prose.<br />
<br />
Now, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln researcher [Prof. Kenneth Price] has discovered nearly 3,000 previously unknown Whitman documents from that era -- a trove of information that sheds new light on the legendary poet's post-war thinking, as well as Whitman's published reflections on the state of the nation that soon followed.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-84913040836797405952011-04-08T06:33:00.000-07:002011-04-08T06:33:24.085-07:00Charlotte Perkins Gilman bibliographyI've posted a new bibliography for Charlotte Perkins Gilman: <a href="http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/gilmanbib.htm">http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/gilmanbib.htm</a>.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-64108314418984509192011-03-17T09:43:00.000-07:002011-03-17T09:56:08.785-07:00Updates to the Sui Sin Far bibliographyUpdates to the Sui Sin Far (Edith Eaton) bibliography at <a href="http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/farbib.htm">http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/farbib.htm </a>, including several from 2010 and some not found in the <i>MLA Bibliography</i>.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10215278.post-43413299878463716622011-02-18T09:36:00.000-08:002011-02-18T10:10:55.252-08:00Updates to Frances E. W. Harper BibliographyI've updated the Frances E. W. Harper page and Bibliography <a href="http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/harbib.htm">http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/harbib.htm</a>.<br />
<br />
Also updated: Charles W. Chesnutt bibliography: <a href="http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/chesbib.htm">http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/chesbib.htm</a>.D. Campbellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03186035585484630092noreply@blogger.com0