The Social Construction of American Realism

by Amy Kaplan

Book Overview

Kaplan redefines American realism as a genre more engaged with a society in flux than with one merely reflective of the status quo. She reads realistic narrative as a symbolic act of imagining and controlling the social upheavals of early modern capitalism, particularly class conflict and the development of mass culture. Brilliant analyses of works by Howells, Wharton, and Dreiser illuminate the narrative process by which realism constructs a social...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226424294
• ISBN13: 9780226424293
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 187 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.3"