The search for immediacy, the desire to feel directly connected to people or events, has been a driving force in American literature and media culture for the past two centuries. This book offers the first in-depth study of literary immediacy effects. It shows how the heightened reality effects of photography, film, and television inspired American writers to create new literary forms that would enhance their readers' sense of immediate participation in the world. The study combines close readings of Emerson, Whitman, Stein, Dos Passos, Coover, Foster Wallace, and DeLillo with detailed considerations of visual media to open up a new perspective on literary innovation and the ongoing cultural quest for increased immediacy. It argues that we can better understand how American literature develops when we consider experiments with literary form not only in literary and cultural contexts but also in relation to the emergence of new media, their immediacy effects, and the larger changes in s
This book highlights some of the latest currents in Whitman scholarship and demonstrates how Whitman's work can speak to and transform discussions in literary studies during a time of great intellectual ferment. It is organized into three sections, addressing aesthetics and politics, new reading methods, and histories of the critical imagination. This volume contains innovative work on Whitman in a range of fields. With the explosion of the digitization of books and periodicals in the past few years, the entire sense of Whitman's career is changing, and these essays are informed by the latest revelations among primary sources. The New Walt Whitman Studies shows how the latest concerns of literary analysis, from surface reading to ecocriticism to the digital humanities, emerged from an engagement with Whitman's work.
The New Edith Wharton Studies uncovers new evidence and presents new ideas that invite us to reconsider our understanding of one of America's most highly acclaimed, versatile, and prolific writers. The volume addresses themes that have previously been missed or underdeveloped, and examines areas where previous scholarship does not take account of key, contemporary issues: Wharton and ecocriticism, Wharton and queer studies, Wharton and animal studies, Wharton and whiteness, and Wharton and contemporary psychology. Essays explore Wharton's treatment of the poor in her emerging career, the ways in which French thinkers helped her envision community, the importance of Greece to Wharton, her transnationalism, the ongoing revelations of the author's archives, and new perspectives on her agency in the literary marketplace. It addresses key themes and examines contemporary issues, while reassessing Edith Wharton's life and career.
