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Reading for Reform: The Social Work of Literature in the Progressive Era - Couverture souple

Fisher, Laura R.

 
9781517903831: Reading for Reform: The Social Work of Literature in the Progressive Era
Couverture souple
ISBN 10 : 1517903831 ISBN 13 : 9781517903831
Editeur : University of Minnesota Press, 2019

Synopsis

An unprecedented examination of class-bridging reform and U.S. literary history at the turn of the twentieth century

Reading for Reform rewrites the literary history of late nineteenth and early twentieth century America by putting social reform institutions at the center of literary and cultural analysis. Examining the vibrant, often fractious literary cultures that developed as part of the Progressive mandate to uplift the socially disadvantaged, it shows that in these years reformers saw literature as a way to combat the myriad social problems that plagued modern U.S. society. As they developed distinctly literary methods for Americanizing immigrants, uplifting and refining wage-earning women, and educating black students, their institutions gave rise to a new social purpose for literature.

Class-bridging reform institutions--the urban settlement house, working girls' club, and African American college--are rarely addressed in literary history. Yet, Laura R. Fisher argues, they engendered important experiments in the form and social utility of American literature, from minor texts of Yiddish drama and little-known periodical and reform writers to the fiction of Edith Wharton and Nella Larsen. Fisher delves into reform's vast and largely unexplored institutional archives to show how dynamic sites of modern literary culture developed at the margins of social power.

Fisher reveals how reformist approaches to race, class, religion, and gender formation shaped American literature between the 1880s and the 1920s. In doing so, she tells a new story about the fate of literary practice, and the idea of literature's practical value, during the very years that modernist authors were proclaiming art's autonomy from concepts of social utility.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l'auteur

Laura R. Fisher is associate professor of English at Ryerson University.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
University of Minnesota Press
Date d'édition
2019
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
1517903831
ISBN 13 
9781517903831
Reliure
Broché
Nombre de pages
304
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible