Few spaces remain as central to American consciousness as the western frontier. The vast territory, which for generations fueled the desires and conquests of artists, philosophers, and politicians alike, now offers new discoveries in Richard Lehan's Quest West. Through an intellectual and cultural history of the frontier experience, Lehan details the transformations of ideas and literary forms that occurred as the country expanded to the west and demonstrates how the wilderness, and then by turn the urban frontier, represent an ideological summary of the nation itself. His study involves the foundations of belief and the realms of evolving interpretations, from mythic destiny to the more regional address of historicism. In both instances, the desire is to find meaning in the lost past. By tracing the evolution of Frederick Jackson Turner's famous thesis -- that the unchartered frontier ended in 1890 and was replaced with an equally precarious urban landscape -- Lehan argues that the two spaces became the basis for a division still evident in America today. Historically, the wilderness accommodated conservative thinking, while urban environments proved more conducive to liberal values. Ideologies stemming from the two regions, as Lehan shows, found literary equivalents in fictional narratives ranging from subgenres like the Western and naturalism to modern forms like neorealism and noir, extending even into the postmodern. Lehan offers a view of the West as a cultural phenomenon borne of ideological changes, encompassing historical and literary movements -- from Puritan perspectives to the revisionist claims of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, from homesteading to imperial ambition. Quest West traces these competing ideas as they appear in the works of major American writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Nathanael West, and John Steinbeck. An important work of literary and historical scholarship, Quest West presents compelling evidence that the meaning of America remains inseparable from the march of seminal ideas westward.
In this intellectual and literary history of American, British, and Continental novels of realism and naturalism from 1850 to 1950, Richard Lehan argues that literary naturalism is a narrative mode that creates its own reality. Employing this strategy allows and encourages intertextuality - one novel talking or responding to another.
This sweeping literary encounter with the Western idea of the city moves from the early novel in England to the apocalyptic cityscapes of Thomas Pynchon. Along the way, Richard Lehan gathers a rich entourage that includes Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Bram Stoker, Rider Haggard, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Raymond Chandler. The European city is read against the decline of feudalism and the rise of empire and totalitarianism; the American city against the phenomenon of the wilderness, the frontier, and the rise of the megalopolis and the decentered, discontinuous city that followed. Throughout this book, Lehan pursues a dialectic of order and disorder, of cities seeking to impose their presence on the surrounding chaos. Rooted in Enlightenment yearnings for reason, his journey goes from east to west, from Europe to America. In the United States, the movement is also westward and terminates in Los Angeles, a kind of land's end of the imagination, in Lehan's words. He charts a narrative continuum full of constructs that "represent" a cycle of hope and despair, of historical optimism and pessimism. Lehan presents sharply etched portrayals of the correlation between rationalism and capitalism; of the rise of the city, the decline of the landed estate, and the formation of the gothic; and of the emergence of the city and the appearance of other genres such as detective narrative and fantasy literature. He also mines disciplines such as urban studies, architecture, economics, and philosophy, uncovering material that makes his study a lively read not only for those interested in literature, but for anyone intrigued by the meanings and mysteries of urban life.
[Lehan] has further widened his scope (and deepened his insights) with a sweeping study of modernism and postmodernism.... [Literary Modernism] provides an indispensable overview of literary creation and criticism over the past one-hundred-plus years. It is an engrossing read as well as a useful research tool, its index directing the reader to enlightening looks at particular writers and concepts in the context of their time and its tendencies." -- Studies in American Naturalism In Literary Modernism and Beyond, Richard Lehan tracks the evolution of modernism from its emergence in the late nineteenth century to its recent incarnations. In his wide-ranging study, Lehan demonstrates how and why the "originary vision" of modernism changed radically after it gained prominence. With critical discussions on a variety of modernist writers, intellectuals, and artists and their works -- including Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Andr? Gide, Franz Kafka, Zora Neale Hurston, Ian Fleming, and J. K. Rowling -- Lehan examines the large-scale changes that came about as critical authority moved from one generation to another.
In this sweeping literary encounter with the Western idea of the city, Richard Lehan delves into literature, philosophy, and urban history to untangle the contradictory images and meanings of the urban experience. He traces the relationship between literature and the city from the early novel in England to the apocalyptic cityscapes of Thomas Pynchon. Along the way, Lehan gathers a rich entourage of support that includes Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Bram Stoker, H. Rider Haggard, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Raymond Chandler. The European city is read against the decline of feudalism and the rise of empire and totalitarianism, the American city against the phenomenon of the wilderness, the frontier, and the rise of the megalopolis.
A fresh and unusual study of Dreiser which stresses the political and philosophical theories basic to his novels. Theodore Dreiser, one of our foremost writers, has been read and reread, and abundant biographical details have been made known to shed light on his work. Yet what has remained to be done is what Richard Lehan has done here in this fresh and unusual portrait of Dreiser—to re-create and relate to the works themselves the usable past out of which Dreiser wrote, the turn-of-the-century America with all of its materialism, crassness, and business immorality which attracted and repelled Dreiser and out of which came his created world of fiction. A unique feature of this book which will be of interest to Dreiser scholars is the generous use made here of original holographs from the Theodore Dreiser Collection at the University of Pennsylvania. Dreiser’s characters must be understood for what they tell us about the success-driven men and women of America, Mr. Lehan maintains. They do not retreat into the world of the dead past in search of genteel fulfillment, in search of “consciousness.” They struggle in the modern city, chase the fantasies of their desire, and break down the doors of convention—very much as Dreiser himself did in his personal escape and struggle and conflict with materialistic and altruistic motives which drove him compulsively and made a tormented man of him—a point missed by many critics.
Few spaces remain as central to American consciousness as the western frontier. The vast territory, which for generations fueled the desires and conquests of artists, philosophers, and politicians alike, now offers new discoveries in Richard Lehan's Quest West. Through an intellectual and cultural history of the frontier experience, Lehan details the transformations of ideas and literary forms that occurred as the country expanded to the west and demonstrates how the wilderness, and then by turn the urban frontier, represent an ideological summary of the nation itself. His study involves the foundations of belief and the realms of evolving interpretations, from mythic destiny to the more regional address of historicism. In both instances, the desire is to find meaning in the lost past. By tracing the evolution of Frederick Jackson Turner's famous thesis -- that the unchartered frontier ended in 1890 and was replaced with an equally precarious urban landscape -- Lehan argues that the two spaces became the basis for a division still evident in America today. Historically, the wilderness accommodated conservative thinking, while urban environments proved more conducive to liberal values. Ideologies stemming from the two regions, as Lehan shows, found literary equivalents in fictional narratives ranging from subgenres like the Western and naturalism to modern forms like neorealism and noir, extending even into the postmodern. Lehan offers a view of the West as a cultural phenomenon borne of ideological changes, encompassing historical and literary movements -- from Puritan perspectives to the revisionist claims of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, from homesteading to imperial ambition. Quest West traces these competing ideas as they appear in the works of major American writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Walt Whitman, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Nathanael West, and John Steinbeck. An important work of literary and historical scholarship, Quest West presents compelling evidence that the meaning of America remains inseparable from the march of seminal ideas westward.
[Lehan] has further widened his scope (and deepened his insights) with a sweeping study of modernism and postmodernism.... [Literary Modernism] provides an indispensable overview of literary creation and criticism over the past one-hundred-plus years. It is an engrossing read as well as a useful research tool, its index directing the reader to enlightening looks at particular writers and concepts in the context of their time and its tendencies." -- Studies in American Naturalism In Literary Modernism and Beyond, Richard Lehan tracks the evolution of modernism from its emergence in the late nineteenth century to its recent incarnations. In his wide-ranging study, Lehan demonstrates how and why the "originary vision" of modernism changed radically after it gained prominence. With critical discussions on a variety of modernist writers, intellectuals, and artists and their works -- including Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Andr? Gide, Franz Kafka, Zora Neale Hurston, Ian Fleming, and J. K. Rowling -- Lehan examines the large-scale changes that came about as critical authority moved from one generation to another.
This sweeping literary encounter with the Western idea of the city moves from the early novel in England to the apocalyptic cityscapes of Thomas Pynchon. Along the way, Richard Lehan gathers a rich entourage that includes Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Bram Stoker, Rider Haggard, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Raymond Chandler. The European city is read against the decline of feudalism and the rise of empire and totalitarianism; the American city against the phenomenon of the wilderness, the frontier, and the rise of the megalopolis and the decentered, discontinuous city that followed. Throughout this book, Lehan pursues a dialectic of order and disorder, of cities seeking to impose their presence on the surrounding chaos. Rooted in Enlightenment yearnings for reason, his journey goes from east to west, from Europe to America. In the United States, the movement is also westward and terminates in Los Angeles, a kind of land's end of the imagination, in Lehan's words. He charts a narrative continuum full of constructs that "represent" a cycle of hope and despair, of historical optimism and pessimism. Lehan presents sharply etched portrayals of the correlation between rationalism and capitalism; of the rise of the city, the decline of the landed estate, and the formation of the gothic; and of the emergence of the city and the appearance of other genres such as detective narrative and fantasy literature. He also mines disciplines such as urban studies, architecture, economics, and philosophy, uncovering material that makes his study a lively read not only for those interested in literature, but for anyone intrigued by the meanings and mysteries of urban life.
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