american literature

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Topical Term
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a
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american literature

Jack Kerouac

selected letters 1957-1969
2000
Jack Kerouac left a voluminous correspondence for posterity to research. In his letters he makes it clear that he understood exactly what he was doing as a writer and consistently explains his aesthetic, his writing plan and the essentially benign charity of his vision.

The Jungle

2004
Exposes the filthy conditions in the Chicago meatpacking industry and led to the implementation of the Pure Food and Drug Act on June 30, 1906.

Portrait of a lady

2004
Isabel Archer is a beautiful, spirited American who becomes a victim of her own provincialism during her travels in Europe. Determined to control her own fate, she turns down two eligible suitors and using an inheritance, she travels. But her fortune only leads her to make a tragic choice and marry Gilbert Osmond, An American expatriate who lives in Florence. The book is the story of her survival as she begins to realize that true freedom means living with one's choices despite the consequences.

Literary masterpieces : The Catcher in the rye

Gale study guides to great literature
2001
Literary Masterpieces is one series of the trio that makes up the Gale Study Guides to Great Literature (the others are Literary Topics and Literary Masters). Each Literary Masterpieces volume chooses a book by one of the authors covered in Literary Masters and offers a discussion of themes, characters, comparisons with social events of the era when the book was written and a critical analysis. The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951 when J. D. Salinger had already achieved commercial success and critical acclaim as a short-story writer. The ultimate troubled teenage story is told by seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield who has just flunked out of his third prep school. This novel spells out everything that has ever troubled a teenager about the adult world during any period in history---hypocrisy, insincerity, lack of compassion, lack of respect for everything, and the importance of material possessions over people.

Literary masterpieces : Sister Carrie

Gale study guides to great literature
2001
Literary Masterpieces is one series of the trio that makes up the Gale Study Guides to Great Literature (the others are Literary Topics and Literary Masters). Each Literary Masterpieces volume chooses a book by one of the authors covered in Literary Masters and offers a discussion of themes, characters, comparisons with social events of the era when the book was written and a critical analysis. Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, written in 1900, broke with the tradition of the time of sentimental romance in favor of a realistic approach. The novel shocked its publisher, the critics and the public with its themes of the rejected family, the struggle against poverty, the desire for wealth, the illusion of limitless opportunity and the conflict between personal desire and conventional restraint. In many ways, Carrie's story anticipates the radical change in social values that took place in twentieth-century America.

Literary masterpieces : Look homeward, angel

Gale study guides to great literature
2001
Literary Masterpieces is one series of the trio that makes up the Gale Study Guides to Great Literature (the others are Literary Topics and Literary Masters). Each Literary Masterpieces volume chooses a book by one of the authors covered in Literary Masters and offers a discussion of themes, characters, comparisons with social events of the era when the book was written and a critical analysis. Look Homeward, Angel: A Story of the Buried Life, was published in 1929, and was Thomas Wolfe's first book. The novel recounts the physical, mental, and emotional life of Eugene Gant, the autobiographical protagonist, through the first twenty years of his life.

Literary masterpieces : The Sound and the fury

Gale study guides to great literature
2000
Literary Masterpieces is one series of the trio that makes up the Gale Study Guides to Great Literature (the others are Literary Topics and Literary Masters). Each Literary Masterpieces volume chooses a book by one of the authors covered in Literary Masters and offers a discussion of themes, characters, comparisons with social events of the era when the book was written and a critical analysis. The Sound and the Fury was William Faulkner's fourth published novel and deals with four days in the lives of the Compson family of Jefferson, Mississippi. Faulker reveals the story instead of telling it, as a standard plot line would, and he makes use of disordered fragments organized in blatant disregard of conventions of linear calendar and clock time.

Literary masterpieces : The Sun also rises

Gale study guides to great literature
2000
Literary Masterpieces is one series of the trio that makes up the Gale Study Guides to Great Literature (the others are Literary Topics and Literary Masters). Each Literary Masterpieces volume chooses a book by one of the authors covered in literary Masters and offers a discussion of themes, characters, comparisons with social events of the era when the book was written and a critical analysis. The Sun Also Rises was published on October 22, 1926, in the midst of Ernest Hemingway's most celebrated decade as a writer.

Literary masterpieces : The Maltese falcon

Gale study guides to great literature
2000
Literary Masterpieces is one series of the trio that makes up the Gale Study Guides to Great Literature (the others are Literary Topics and Literary Masters). Each Literary Masterpieces volume chooses a book by one of the authors covered in Literary Masters and offers a discussion of themes, characters, comparisons with social events of the era when the book was written and a critical analysis. Dashiell Hammett began writing in 1922 and was one of many mystery writers in America at that time. However, he was the most accomplished and his experiences as a Pinkerton detective brought realism to his mystery fiction. The Maltese Falcon, as well as many of his other works, are mysteries of lasting literary worth.

Literary masterpieces : The Great Gatsby

Gale study guides to great literature
2000
Literary Masterpieces is one series of the trio that makes up the Gale Study Guides to Great Literature (the others are Literary Topics and Literary Masters). Each Literary Masterpieces volume chooses a book by one of the authors covered in Literary Masters and offers a discussion of themes, characters, comparisons with social events of the era when the book was written and a critical analysis. The Great Gatsby was F. Scott Fitzgerald's sixth published book and is one of two American books loved by both literary critics and a wide, general audience. When he wrote it, Fitzgerald was already a well-known writer.

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