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Literature of New York is the first collection of critical essays to look at historical and contemporary images of New York through an examination of works of literature by New York writers about New York. New York City is a study in contradictions; it offers at once a sense of possibility, cultivation, self-realization and a fear of corruption, decay, and despair. The literature of New York is representative of American national identity and of the unique nature of the metropolitan, urban experience. The essays are arranged chronologically to reflect the changing significance of the city in relation to various movements in American literary and cultural history. It includes essays on the relation of urban public space to various editions of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass; the theme of surveillance in the literature of New York by Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, and Ann Petry; fear of the cultural Other within modern New York in Henry James''The Jolly Corner'; use of the setting of New York City to emphasize both the dynamic energy and increasing anxiety of the modern American cityscape in Dos Passos'Manhattan Transfer (1925); the satiric portrayal of New York society in the 1920s and 30s in Dorothy Parker's recently collected stories and sketches; the response to post-WWII New York City in fictionalized autobiography in the personal narratives of Audre Lorde and Diane di Prima; the poetics of second generation New York School poet Ted Berrigan in relation to his predecessors; the representation of New York in postmodern fiction, depicting at once a sense of loss at the inability to return to the old neighborhood of the past in Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis and the possibility of reasserting order and meaning amidst the chaos and terror of post-911 New York in Jay McInerney's The Good Life (2006). Whether expressing nostalgia for the past, hope for the future, fear of the unknown, or the possibility of self-actualization, the literature of New York continues to draw inspiration from its locale and is as complex, contradictory, and creative as the City itself. Contributors include Karen Karbiener, Mark James Noonan, Jonathan Readey, Heidi E. Bollinger, Sabrina Fuchs-Abrams, Kirsten Bartholomew Ortega, Michael Angelo Tata, Jessica Maucione, and Sonia Baelo-Allué.

Whether one thinks of the modern world or of more remote times, both seem to have been affected – if not moulded – by the interaction between the concepts of authority and displacement. Indeed, political and social sources of authority have often been the causes of major geographical displacements, as can be illustrated by the numerous waves of migration which have been observed in the past and which are still present today, such as the transportation of slaves from African to American coasts in colonial times.If displacement can often be understood as spatial displacement, it can also be synonymous with psychological, social, and even aesthetic displacement, for instance through different artistic means or through the use of stylistic discursive devices. Displacement also entails dis-placement, dis-location, as well as dislocation, or chaos. This suggests that the etymological meaning of the term authority, auctoritas, has to be highlighted, thus referring to the author of a particular work and to the different manifestations of the authorial persona in a work of art.This collection of essays in two volumes examines the relationships between the concepts of authority and displacement in the English-speaking world, without restricting the analysis to a particular area, or to the field of literature. Some essays do, indeed, deal with literature, from different spatial areas and temporal eras, while others look into these concepts from a more cultural or aesthetic point of view.Volume Two, Exploring American Shores, includes essays on the place of famous fugitives in American culture (notably through the story of Bonnie and Clyde) as well as on the links between displacement, authority and sculpture on the one hand (Placing and Replacing the Capitol Sculptures), and on the links between displacement and photography on the other, through a study of Joel Sternfeld's Walking the High Line. In addition to investigations of Louise Erdrich's novel Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country, Canadian “landscapes in transit” will be studied to highlight the displacement of the Western landscape tradition in English Canada. The volume concludes with a study of some literary works by several writers of Guyanese origin – first with an essay comparing Martin Carter's and Léon-Gontran Damas's literary productions, and then with an essay devoted to Fred D'Aguiar's novel, The Longest Memory (1994).

Contemporary notions of friendship regularly place it in the private sphere, associated with feminized forms of sympathy and affection. As Ivy Schweitzer explains, however, this perception leads to a misunderstanding of American history. In an exploration of early American literature and culture, Schweitzer uncovers friendships built on a classical model that is both public and political in nature. Schweitzer begins with Aristotle's ideal of'perfect'friendship that positions freely chosen relationships among equals as the highest realization of ethical, social, and political bonds. Evidence in works by John Winthrop, Hannah Foster, James Fenimore Cooper, and Catharine Sedgwick confirms that this classical model shaped early American concepts of friendship and, thus, democracy. Schweitzer argues that recognizing the centrality of friendship as a cultural institution is critical to understanding the rationales for consolidating power among white males in the young nation. She also demonstrates how women, nonelite groups, and minorities have appropriated and redefined the discourse of perfect friendship, making equality its result rather than its requirement. By recovering the public nature of friendship, Schweitzer establishes discourse about affection and affiliation as a central component of American identity and democratic community.

The American idea,'a blend of the Idea of Progress and a belief in the essential goodness of man, has determined the form of much of our significant literature. Carter treats the response to this idea in most of the major and many of the minor writers of the nineteenth century, including Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, William and Henry James, Mark Twain, Howells, and Henry Adams, and sees the persistence of the idea in the novels of Saul Bellow.'Originally published in 1977.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Description based on print version record.