Jones American Hungers

The Problem of Poverty in U.S. Literature, 1840-1945
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-3191-3
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 9, 248 Seiten

Reihe: 20/21

No detailed description available for "American Hungers".

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jones, Gavin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziale Ungleichheit, Armut, Rassismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Wohnen & Obdachlosigkeit
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Preface xiii

INTRODUCTION: The Problem of Poverty in Literary Criticism 1

CHAPTER ONE: Beggaring Description: Herman Melville and Antebellum Poverty Discourse 21

Paradigms of Poverty and Pauperism 23

Literary Uses and Abuses of Poverty 28

The Ambivalence of Thoreau and Davis 32

Redburn and Israel Potter: Transatlantic Counterparts 38

Melville's Sketches of the Mid-1850s 46

Poor Pierre 52

Problems of Need in The Confidence-Man 59

CHAPTER TWO: Being Poor in the Progressive Era: Dreiser and Wharton on the Pauper Problem 62

Writing Poverty 65

The Persistence of Pauperism 72

What's the Matter with Hurstwood? 76

The Class That Drifts 80

Fear of Falling 85

The Feminization of Poverty 88

Poor Lily 92

Class and Gender 100

CHAPTER THREE: The Depression in Black and White: Agee, Wright, and the Aesthetics of Damage 106

Understanding the Depression 110

Agee's Uncertainty 116

Damage and Disadvantage 120

The Beauty and Erotics of Poverty 124

Race, Class, and Poor Richard 129

American Hunger 139

Delinquent Identity 144

CONCLUSION 148

Notes 155

Works Cited 201

Index 219

Über Autor(innen)

Gavin Jones is professor of English at Stanford University. He is the author of Strange Talk: The Politics of Dialect Literature in Gilded Age America.