Getting at the Author: Reimagining Books and Reading in the Age of American Realism

Research output: Book/ReportBookpeer-review

Abstract

Throughout the nineteenth century, American readers and reviewers assumed that a book revealed its author's individuality, that the experience of reading was a kind of conversation with the writer. Yet as Barbara Hochman shows in this illuminating study, the emergence of literary realism at the turn of the century called such assumptions into question. The realist aesthetic of narrative "objectivity" challenged the notion that a literary text reflects its author's personality.
But reading practices were slow to change; many resisted the effort to reconceptualize the relationship among writers, readers, and books. Even the most consistent advocates of "impartial" narration found it difficult to imagine a book without an author or to dissociate the experience of reading from the idea of a reciprocal human transaction.
In analyzing the battle over realism and the gradual shift in conventional reading practices, Hochman draws on a rich array of sources, including popular works, advertisements, and letters. She combines traditional modes of literary inquiry with methods adapted from the new historicism, cultural studies, and book history. By elucidating the realists' ambivalence about their own aesthetic criteria, she shows how a late nineteenth century conflict about reading practices reflected pressing tensions in American culture, and how that conflict shaped criteria of literary value for most of the twentieth century.
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationAmherst
PublisherUniversity of Massachusetts Press
Number of pages204
ISBN (Print)9781558492875, 1558492879
StatePublished - Apr 2001

Publication series

NameStudies in Print Culture and the History of the Book

Keywords

  • Authors and readers
  • USA
  • Books and reading
  • American fiction
  • Lezen
  • Geschichte 1913-2000
  • Realism in literature
  • United States
  • Reader-response criticism
  • Prosa
  • Criticism
  • Fiction

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Getting at the Author: Reimagining Books and Reading in the Age of American Realism'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this