Books in the Studies in American Literature and Culture series

New scholarly essays providing a multifaceted approach to the role of Africa in Hemingway's life and work.

A fascinating survey of the changing fortunes of Steinbeck's critical reputation.

A handbook to Hemingway's famous collection of short stories that emphasizes its status as a modernist masterwork.

New essays examining the interface between 18th- and 20th-century culture both in Pynchon's novel and in the historical past.

The first chronological overview of O'Connor criticism from the publication of her first novel, Wise Blood, in 1952 to the present.

Shows that the writings of Paul Bowles, who is often seen as a literary renegade, owe much to the antinomian American tradition of Emerson and his literary descendants.Paul Bowles has often been considered a cult writer, a literary renegade: he lived more than fifty years as an expatriate in Morocco, and according to Norman Mailer, his works "e;let in the murder, the drugs, the incest, the call ofthe orgy, the end of civilization."e; In recent decades Bowles has found greater acceptance as a serious writer, as evidenced by the two-volume, 2,000-page Library of America edition of his works published in 2002. Still, he has rarely if ever been seen as having written in the antinomian tradition of Emerson and his literary descendants. The present book makes the case for doing so by demonstrating basic Emersonian attitudes and objectives in Bowles' lifeand works, especially in his focus on human consciousness and perception and on the need for the individual to escape from the trammels of social and cultural conditioning. Bowles' intellectual pursuits seem to have developed at first from his own spontaneous attitudes, which were then reinforced by his conservative and individualistic New England background on both sides of his family and deepened by a serious study of anthropology, Emersonian transcendentalism, and related "e;Oriental"e; thought such as the theosophy of Krishnamurti. Despite his half century in Tangier, Bowles is a writer who is thoroughly "e;in the American grain."e;

New essays providing fresh insights into the great 20th-century American poet Lowell, his writings, and his struggles.Robert Lowell (1917-1977) holds a place of unchallenged prominence in the poetic pantheon of the twentieth-century United States. He is an essential focal point for understanding the connection between poetry and American history,social justice, and personal identity. A recent spate of publications both by and about him, as well as allusions to him in the work of major American poets such as Wanda Coleman and Claudia Rankine, attest to his continued relevance. In March 2017, leading Lowell scholars from Europe and America gathered at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland in commemoration of his 100th birthday. The essays deriving from the conference and presented here aftercareful revision reveal new aspects of Lowell: for instance, the poet's influence on his peers, discussed by Thomas Travisano, the biographer of Elizabeth Bishop; or echoes of Milton in Lowell's work, discussed by Saskia Hamilton, editor of the forthcoming Dolphin Letters between Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick. Other essays examine Lowell's struggles with bipolar illness, with marriage, and with money; his economic views and his early personality issues with respect to his poetic production; his extended sojourn in Amsterdam; and his special relationship with Ireland. Several essays focus on his 1961 volume Imitations, his major poetic engagement with the European tradition, unjustly neglected in the US. The essays will appeal to the wide audience that Lowell scholarship continues to command. Contributors: Steven Gould Axelrod, Massimo Bacigalupo, Philip Coleman, Ian D. Copestake, Astrid Franke, Jo Gill, Saskia Hamilton, Frank J. Kearful, Grzegorz Kosc, Diederik Oostdijk, Francesco Rognoni, Thomas Travisano, Boris Vejdovsky. Thomas Austenfeld is Professor of American Literature at the University of Fribourg.

Employing close reading of a kind usually associated with the study of lyric poetry, this book offers a general framework for reading African-American (and American) literature.This book springs from two premises. The first is that, with a nod toward Marianne Moore, America is - has always been - an imaginary place with real people living in it. The second is that slavery and its legacies explain how andwhy this is the case. The second premise assumes that slavery - and, after that fell, white supremacy generally - have been necessary adjuncts to American capitalism. Mark Richardson registers these two premises at the level of style and rhetoric - in the texture as much as in the "e;arguments"e; of the books he engages. His book is written to appeal to a general reader. It begins with Frederick Douglass, continues with W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Chesnutt, andRichard Wright, and treats works by writers not often discussed in books concerning race in American literature - for example, Stephen Crane and Jack Kerouac. It brings to bear on such books as Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom, Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, and Crane's The Red Badge of Courage a degree and quality of attention one usually associates with the study of lyric poetry. The book offers a general framework within which to read African-American (and American) literature. Mark Richardson is Professor of English at Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. He is co-editor of The Letters of Robert Frost (Harvard University Press) andauthor of The Ordeal of Robert Frost (University of Illinois Press, 1997).