Reading America: New Perspectives on the American Novel
Editor: Elizabeth Boyle and Anne-Marie Evans
Date Of Publication: Sep 2008
Isbn13: 9781847187772
Isbn: 1-84718-777-3
This specially commissioned volume of essays offers a refreshing and unusual perspective on classic novels from the American literary canon. Accessible to students, scholars and the interested reader, this engaging collection explores familiar novels through unfamiliar lenses and, in so doing, sheds light on surprising and previously overlooked aspects of each text.

Reading America presents a new approach to American literature by showcasing a cross-section of recent research into previously un-tapped areas of interest. Each chapter attempts to re-read classic American texts using new or unorthodox theoretical frameworks, including such diverse topics as an Emersonian reading of Don DeLillo, decoding Thomas Pynchon with eco-criticism and understanding Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy by exploring the graphic novel version of “City of Glass”. Other authors explored in this way include Henry James, Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates and F. Scott Fitzgerald. This type of approach widens the reader’s knowledge of each well-known text and encourages new critical evaluations of contemporary American literature.

The collection moves through six large topic areas, from Naturalism and an idea of the “Great American Novel” at the end of the nineteenth century, through politics, sexuality, language and nature, to a contemporary engagement with postmodernism. Each essay deals with its own particular subject and author, but the full impact of each on the notion of the “American novel” as a phenomenon can only be understood when read in conjunction with the others.

Of interest to both undergraduate and postgraduate students, Reading America would be a valuable asset to any American Studies or American Literature degree course, and a useful companion to American History or Politics courses. The volume will also attract strong interest from established academics, especially those researching the fields of literature, critical theory, cultural history and politics.

Elizabeth Boyle received her doctorate on African American literature from the University of Sheffield in 2008 and teaches English and American Literature at the same institution. She is co-editor of Reading America: New Perspectives on the American Novel (2008) and is currently developing a monograph, In-Between: Liminality and Identity in African American Literature. She is also Editor of U.S. Studies Online, the British Association for American Studies Postgraduate Journal.

Anne-Marie Evans has been a Teaching Fellow at the University of Sheffield since 2006. Her research interests involve the changing role of consumerism in the work of various women writers including Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Gertrude Stein and Zora Neale Hurston. She has been published in MODE and The Edith Wharton Review, and is a regular book reviewer for the Journal of American Studies and American Studies Today. With Elizabeth Boyle, she is currently developing a new project entitled Writing into the Twenty-First Century: Negotiating Change in the American Novel.

"'Reading America' does what it promises, offering new perspectives on the American novel. The articles are fresh, challenging and compelling, imaginatively organized into a highly readable and well-researched volume looking at the extraordinary growth and importance of the novel form in the United States from the era of realism and naturalism in the late 19th century to the radical disorientation of postmodern texts. Young, emergent scholars offer informed and vital readings of major novels. Very welcome indeed."

Professor Adam Piette, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield

Price Uk Gbp: 34.99
Price Us Usd: 52.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)