Sensational Designs The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860

Name: Sensational Designs The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860
Availability: OutOfStock
ISBN: 9780195035650

ISBN-10: 0195035658

ISBN-13: 9780195035650

Edition: 1985

Authors: Jane P. Tompkins

List price: $24.95

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Description:

What makes a literary classic? In " Sensational Designs" Jane Tompkins argues that it is not the intrinsic merit of a text, but rather the circumstances of its writing. Against the modernist belief that art, in order to be art, must be free from propaganda, Tompkins contends that writers like Brockden Brown, Cooper, Stowe, and Warner wrote in order to alter the face of the social world, not to elicit aesthetic appreciation.Thus, the value and significance of the novels, for readers of their time, depended on precisely those characteristics that formalist criticism has taught us to deplore: stereotyped characters, sensational plots, and cliched language.

Book details

List price: $24.95
Copyright year: 1985
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Publication date: 5/23/1985
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 265
Language: English