New Readings of the American Novel: Narrative Theory and Its Applications - Softcover

Peter B. Messent

9780333437971: New Readings of the American Novel: Narrative Theory and Its Applications

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0333437977 ISBN 13: 9780333437971

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990

New Readings of the American Novel consists of a series of close readings of eight key American novels from roughly 1880 to 1940. These readings both illustrate the usefulness and richness of contemporary theory and uncover different and unexpected aspects of novels too often taken for granted or, increasingly, dismissed.

Peter Messent forcefully applies individual narrative theories (on character construction, time and narrative, reader response, dialogics, and so on) to a number of major American novels. In the final chapter, these theories are then brought to bear on Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, both to show the flexibility of the models used and to suggest a move in the direction of a widening of the American literary canon to attempt to capture what Sacvan Bercovitch calls "the heterogeneity of America."

Resolutely arguing for the grounding of the literary text in its social and historical context, the author offers students and scholars of American literature a plurality of critical approaches developed in a systematic way. A new introduction to this second edition reflects on the book's critical position in light of recent developments in the field.

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About the Author:

Peter Messent is Reader of Modern American Literature at the University of Nottingham. He has written on Twain, James, Vonnegut, and the southern novella.

Review:

"This admirable study patiently explicates a veritable tour de force of the different complex strategies employed at present to dissect the "mechanics" of narrative. . . . I cannot begin to represent the richness of Messent's textual explanations nor his adeptness in explaining complex narratological schemes."—Modern Fiction Studies

"This should be essential reading in its totality for any core course in American literature. Messent's is a patient, fluid, and transparent hand that employs an inviting and supportive voice."—Ian Bell, Keele University

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