Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860

by Jane Tompkins

2021-05-28 11:47:51

What makes a literary classic? In "Sensational Designs" Jane Tompkins argues that it is not the intrinsic merit of a text, but rather the circumstances of its writing. Against the modernist belief that art, in order to be art, must be free from propa... Read more
What makes a literary classic? In "Sensational Designs" Jane Tompkins argues that it is not the intrinsic merit of a text, but rather the circumstances of its writing. Against the modernist belief that art, in order to be art, must be free from propaganda, Tompkins contends that writers like Brockden Brown, Cooper, Stowe, and Warner wrote in order to alter the face of the social world, not to elicit aesthetic appreciation.Thus, the value and significance of the novels, for readers of their time, depended on precisely those characteristics that formalist criticism has taught us to deplore: stereotyped characters, sensational plots, and cliched language. Less

Book Details

File size8.27 X 5.51 X 0.75 in
Print pages256
PublisherOxford University Press
Publication date November 1, 1988
LanguageEnglish
ISBN9780195041194

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