The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism

This Companion examines a number of issues related to the terms realism and naturalism. The introduction seeks both to discuss the problems in the use of these two terms in relation to late nineteenth-century fiction and to describe the history of previous efforts to make the terms expressive of American writing of this period. The Companion includes ten essays which fall into four categories: essays on the historical context of realism and naturalism by Louis Budd and Richard Lehan; essays on critical approaches to the movements since the early 1970s by Michael Anesko, essays on the efforts to expand the canon of realism and naturalism by Elizabeth Ammons; and a full-scale discussion of ten major texts, from W. D. Howell’s The Rise of Silas Lapham to Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, by John W. Crowley, Tom Quirk, J. C. Levenson, Blanche Gelfant, Barbara Hochman, and Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin.

• New approaches to a major period in American literature • Original essays by distinguished contributors

List of contributors; Introduction; The problem of definition Donald Pizer; Part I. Historical Contents: 1. The American background Louis J. Budd; 2. The European background Richard Lehan; Part II. Contemporary Critical Issues: 3. Recent critical approaches Michael Anesko; 4. Expanding the canon of American realism Elizabeth Ammons; Part III. Case Studies: 5. The Portrait of a Lady and The Rise of Silas Lapham: the company they kept John W. Crowley; 6. The realism of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Tom Quirk; 7. The Red Badge of Courage and McTeague: passage to modernity J. C. Levenson; 8. What more can Carrie want? Naturalistic ways of consuming women Blanche Gelfant; 9. The Awakening and The House of Mirth: plotting experience and experiencing plot Barbara Hochman; 10. The Jungle and The Call of the Wild: London’s and Sinclair’s animal and human jungles Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin; 11. Troubled black humanity in The Souls of Black Folk and The Autobiography of an Ex-coloured Man Kenneth W. Warren; Further reading; Index.