American Literary Realism And The Failed Promise Of Contract; Author: Thomas, Brook; Paperback

Author: Thomas, Brook
Paperback
374 pages
Published: December 1998
University Presses of California, Columbia and Princeton
ISBN: 0520216644
This item non-returnable. Order may not be canceled.

In law, the late nineteenth century is often called the Age of Contract; in literature, the Age of Realism. Brook Thomas brings contract and realism together to offer groundbreaking insights into both areas while exploring the social and cultural crises that accompanied America's transition from industrial capitalism to the corporate capitalism of the twentieth century. Moving expertly from legal analysis to social history to profoundly recontextualized literary critique, Thomas shows how writers like Twain, James, Howells, Chopin, and Chesnutt took up contract as a model, formally and thematically, evoking its possibilities and dramatizing its failures. American Literary Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract challenges conventional critical wisdom and makes a provocative anIn law, the late 19th century is often called the Age of Contract; in literature, the Age of Realism. This text brings contract and realism together to offer insights into both, while exploring the social and cultural crises that accompanied America's transition to corporate capitalism.