Reading the American Novel 1865 - 1914

G. R. Thompson is Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Purdue University. He has written widely on the topic of American fiction and romanticism, including books and articles on the relation of the romance to the realist tradition, the gothic fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, the short stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the travel narratives of Herman Melville. He is the editor of various editions, including the Norton Critical Edition of The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. He is the former editor of Poe Studies and ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance.

• Preface ix Acknowledgments xvIntroduction 11 Toward the “Great American Novel”: Romance and Romanticism in the Age of Realism 92 Of Realism and Reality: Definitions and Contexts 253 Dramas of the Broken Teacup: American “Quiet” Realism 414 The Nature of Naturalism: Definitions and Backgrounds 555 Implacable Nature, Household Tragedy, and Epic Romance 736 Frank Norris: The Beast Within 917 The Rocking Horse Winners: Theodore Dreiser and Urban Naturalism 1098 Subjective Realism: Stephen Crane’s Impressionist Fictions 1259 Impressions of War: The Interior Battlefield 14110 Sense and Sensibility: Sentimental Domesticity and “New Woman’s Fiction” 15711 Domestic Feminism: The Problematic Louisa May Alcott 17912 “All the Happy Endings”: Marriage, Insanity, and Suicide 19513 Vulgarians at the Gate: Edith Wharton and the Collapse of Gentility 21514 Tea-Table as Jungle: Henry James and “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life” 23515 Economies of Pain: W. D. Howells 26116 The “Gilded Age”: Genteel Critics and Militant Muckrakers 28317 What Is An American? Regionalism and Race 29918 The Territory Ahead: Emerging African American Voices 32319 The “Dream of a Republic”: War, Reconstruction, and Future History 34320 At the Modernist Margin: Mark Twain 367Bibliographical Resources 387Index 421