A Concise Companion to American Fiction, 1900 - 1950

An authoritative guide to American literature, this Companion examines the experimental forms, socio-cultural changes, literary movements, and major authors of the early 20th century. This Companion provides authoritative and wide-ranging guidance on early twentieth-century American fiction. Considers commonly studied authors such as Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway, alongside key texts of the period by Richard Wright, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anzia Yezierska Examines how the works of these diverse writers have been interpreted in their own day and how current readings have expanded our understanding of their cultural and literary significance Covers a broad range of topics, including the First and Second World Wars, literary language differences, author celebrity, the urban landscape, modernism, the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, regionalism, and African-American fiction Gives students the contextual information necessary for formulating their own critiques of classic American fiction

An authoritative guide to American literature, this Companion examines the experimental forms, socio-cultural changes, literary movements, and major authors of the early 20th century. This Companion provides authoritative and wide-ranging guidance on early twentieth-century American fiction.* Considers commonly studied authors such as Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway, alongside key texts of the period by Richard Wright, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anzia Yezierska* Examines how the works of these diverse writers have been interpreted in their own day and how current readings have expanded our understanding of their cultural and literary significance* Covers a broad range of topics, including the First and Second World Wars, literary language differences, author celebrity, the urban landscape, modernism, the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, regionalism, and African-American fiction* Gives students the contextual information necessary for formulating their own critiques of classic American fiction

Notes on Contributors viiChronology xiAcknowledgments xviiiIntroduction 11 Turning the Century 17Michael A. Elliott and Jennifer A. Hughes2 Women and Modernity 37Jennifer L. Fleissner3 Queer Modernity and Lesbian Representation 57Kathryn R. Kent4 Markets and "Gatekeepers" 77Loren Glass5 Manhood, Modernity, and Crime Fiction 94David Schmid6 American Sentences: Terms, Topics, and Techniques in Stylistic Analysis 113Paul Simpson and Donald E. Hardy7 The Great Gatsby as Mobilization Fiction: Rethinking Modernist Prose 132Keith Gandal8 Modernism's History of the Dead 158Michael Szalay9 The Radical 1930s 186Alan M. Wald10 Racial Uplift and the Politics of African American Fiction 205Gene Andrew Jarrett11 The Modernism of Southern Literature 228Florence Dore12 Cosmopolis 253Mary Esteve13 Other Modernisms 275John Carlos RoweIndex 295