Love and Death in the American NovelDalkey Archive Press, 1997 - 512 pages A retrospective article on Leslie Fiedler in the New York Times Book Review in 1965 referred to Love and Death in the American Novel as "one of the great, essential books on the American imagination . . . an accepted major work." This groundbreaking work views in depth both American literature and character from the time of the American Revolution to the present. From it, there emerges Fiedler's once scandalous--now increasingly accepted--judgment that our literature is incapable of dealing with adult sexuality and is pathologically obsessed with death. |
From inside the book
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Page i
... sense of awe and excitement . This comes I think from the courage and the wild leap of imagination which mark his writing . " —The Los Angeles Times " No other study of the American novel has such fascinating and on the whole right ...
... sense of awe and excitement . This comes I think from the courage and the wild leap of imagination which mark his writing . " —The Los Angeles Times " No other study of the American novel has such fascinating and on the whole right ...
Page vii
... sense that his early essay's notoriety derived from a misperception continued to nag at Fiedler . So he set about elaborating his thesis , embedding it in what was to become an expansive theory about what made the American novel ...
... sense that his early essay's notoriety derived from a misperception continued to nag at Fiedler . So he set about elaborating his thesis , embedding it in what was to become an expansive theory about what made the American novel ...
Page 8
... sense in which Love and Death can be read not as a conventional scholarly book — or an eccentric one — but a kind of ... sense of the continuing relevance and immediacy of this study which has impelled me to recast and re - issue it . It ...
... sense in which Love and Death can be read not as a conventional scholarly book — or an eccentric one — but a kind of ... sense of the continuing relevance and immediacy of this study which has impelled me to recast and re - issue it . It ...
Page 9
... sense of the word , an academic or scholarly book , though it is indebted throughout to works of scholarship . The lack of footnotes and formal bibliography will advise the wary that I have sought everywhere the kind of validity which ...
... sense of the word , an academic or scholarly book , though it is indebted throughout to works of scholarship . The lack of footnotes and formal bibliography will advise the wary that I have sought everywhere the kind of validity which ...
Page 10
... sense , it becomes clear that the " text " is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature , its lexical or verbal one , no more or less im- portant than the sociological , psychological , historical , anthropol- ogical , or ...
... sense , it becomes clear that the " text " is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature , its lexical or verbal one , no more or less im- portant than the sociological , psychological , historical , anthropol- ogical , or ...
Contents
23 | |
39 | |
62 | |
74 | |
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ANTIBOURGEOIS SENTIMENTAL NOVEL IN AMERICA | 105 |
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN AND THE INVENTION OF THE AMERICAN GOTHIC | 126 |
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER AND THE HISTORICAL ROMANCE | 162 |
ACHIEVEMENT AND FRUSTRATION | 215 |
CLARISSA IN AMERICA TOWARD MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR | 217 |
GOOD GOOD GIRLS AND GOOD BAD BOYS CLARISSA AS A JUVENILE | 259 |
THE REVENGE ON WOMAN FROM LUCY TO LOLITA | 291 |
THE FAILURE OF SENTIMENT AND THE EVASION OF LOVE | 337 |
THE BLACKNESS OF DARKNESS EDGAR ALLAN POE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GOTHIC | 391 |
THE POWER OF BLACKNESS FAUSTIAN MAN AND THE CULT OF VIOLENCE | 430 |
INDEX | 506 |
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Common terms and phrases
Ahab American novel archetype artist audience become bourgeois Brockden Brown called character Charles Brockden Brown Charlotte Temple child Clarissa comic Cooper courtly love critics death Dimmesdale dream European evil fable father Faulkner Faust Faustian female fiction figure finally genteel girl Gordon Pym gothic gothic novel guilt hand haunted Hawthorne Hawthorne's heart hero heroine Hester horror Huck Huckleberry Finn imagination incest Indian innocent Ishmael literary literature live Lovelace lover Maiden male marriage marry Melville Melville's Moby Dick moral mother myth mythic Natty Natty Bumppo nature Negro never nightmare novelists once passion perhaps Pierre Poe's popular portrayed projected protagonist Pudd'nhead Pudd'nhead Wilson Puritan Queequeg readers represents Richardson Richardsonian role romance Sawyer Scarlet Letter Scott seduction seems sense sentimental novel sexual sister story symbolic terror theme tion Tom Sawyer tradition turn Twain virgin woman women writers
Popular passages
Page 70 - When lovely woman stoops to folly. And finds, too late, that men betray. What charm can soothe her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away? The only art her guilt to cover. To hide her shame from every eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom, — is to die.
Page 57 - Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still: The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
Page 416 - And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling— my darling— my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Page 315 - Dutch sailors' eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams ; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
Page 281 - But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and civilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.
Page 394 - And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us. But there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.
Page 315 - And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an...