The Critical Response to Erskine Caldwell
Greenwood Press (Verlag)
9780313300721 (ISBN)
Author of such classics of 20th-century popular American literature as Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933), Erskine Caldwell was something of a celebrity nearly all his life. But he was also a serious writer, one whose merits are as considerable as they remain underexplored. In the 1930s, he startled the literary world with his frank portrayals of the poor whites of the South. Beginning in the early 1940s, critics grew suspicious that he had exhausted his originality and his talent. In the late 1960s, some scholars began an effort, which continues intermittently today, to reconsider Caldwell's achievement. This collection of reviews, critical essays, and book excerpts provides a chronological portrait of the often contradictory and unfailingly colorful critical response to Caldwell from 1931 to the present.
The 57 pieces collected in this volume were chosen to represent all sides and perspectives in the evolving critical opinion of Caldwell's work. The items are grouped in sections representing three chronological periods that encompass the prevailing critical moods concerning his writings: the 1930s, when readers of many persuasions found him promising and held out great hopes for his development; 1940 to 1968, when increasing critical scrutiny led to his dismissal as a writer of significance; and 1969 to the present, when there have been several substantial efforts to reconsider Caldwell's achievement. An introductory essay argues that Caldwell remains largely absent from our critical consciousness today because of a prevailing willingness among academics to rely on largely negative received opinions about his books in place of primary experience with them. The introduction is followed by a chronology, and the volume concludes with an extensive selected bibliography.
ROBERT L. McDONALD is Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Writing Across the Curriculum program at the Virginia Military Institute. He has published essays on Erskine Caldwell, Tennessee Williams, John Faulkner, and a variety of pedagogical issues in both literature and composition. With Christina Russell, he is the editor of Teaching Composition in the 90s: Sites of Contention (1994).
Series Foreword by Cameron Northouse
Preface
A Caldwell Chronology
Introduction
Erskine Caldwell's (Non)Readers and the Problem of Literary Reputation by Robert L. McDonald
The 1930s: "Great Hopes" and Controversy
Two Judgments of "American Earth" (1931) by T.K. Whipple and Malcolm Cowley
A Hardboiled Idealist (1931) by Norman Macleod
The Poetry of Unfeeling (1931) by Gerald Sykes
Review of Tobacco Road (1932) by James Gray
Poor Whites (1932) by Jonathan Daniels
Raw Leaf (1932) by Edward Dahlberg
Passion and Pellagra (1932) by Jack Conroy
American Humor (1932) by Kenneth White
Farm and Mill (1933) by Jonathan Daniels
Review of God's Little Acre (1933) by Edwin Rolfe
Review of God's Little Acre (1933) by Bennett A. Cerf
Modern American Writing (1933) by Whit Burnett
"God's Little Acre": An Analysis (1934) by Lawrence S. Kubie, M.D.
Caldwell Repeats Himself (1935) by Horace Gregory
Priapus in Georgia (1935) by William Troy
Caldwell: Maker of Grotesques (1935) by Kenneth Burke
Erskine Caldwell's New Short Stories (1935) by Harold Strauss
--and Other Stories (1935) by Robert M. Coates
Review of Kneel to the Rising Sun (1935) by James Gray
Sweet Are the Uses of Degeneracy (1936) by John Donald Wade
Pictures of the South, Drunk on Cotton (1937) by Hudson Strode
A Compelling Album of the Deep South (1937) by Robert Van Gelder
Erskine Caldwell (1937) by Vernon Loggins
Star-Dust Above "Tobacco Road" (1938) by J. H. Marion, Jr.
New Short Stories by Erskine Caldwell (1938) by Harold Strauss
Erskine Caldwell's Picture Book (1938) by Donald Davidson
Naturalistic Modes: The Gothic, The Ribald, and the Tragic (1939) by Shields McIlwaine
1940-1968: The Consequences of Criticism
Jeeter Lester, Agrarian Par Excellence (1940) by Peter A. Carmichael
Lynching Bee (1940) by Richard Wright
Caldwell Comes a Cropper (1942) by Margaret Marshall
Duck Soup for Tobacco Roaders (1943) by Stanley Walker
Erskine Caldwell's Terrifying World (1944) by Dan S. Norton
Review of Stories by Erskine Caldwell (1944) by Harry Sylvester
American Lower Depths (1944) by Jonathan Daniels
Review of Tragic Ground (1944) by James Gray
The Two Erskine Caldwells (1944) by Malcolm Cowley
Folk and Culture in the Novels of Erskine Caldwell (1945) by John Miller Maclachlan
Erskine Caldwell: The Nearly Animal Kingdon (1947) by George Snell
Vice Is What Sells! (1948) by "Patsy"
Erskine Caldwell: The Dangers of Ambiguity (1950) by W. M. Frohock
One Side of Caldwell (1951) by Granville Hicks
Chamber of Horrors--Southern Exposure (1952) by Edward Wagenknecht
Notes on Erskine Caldwell (1953) by Robert Hazel
Erskine Caldwell: A Note for the Negative (1956) by Carl Bode
Caldwell's Characters: Why Don't They Leave? (1957) by Robert Cantwell
[Southern Local Colorists] (1963) by John M. Bradbury
From Violence in Recent Southern Fiction (1965) by Louise Y. Gossett
1969-1995: Reconsiderations
Erskine Caldwell and Southern Religion (1971) by James J. Thompson, Jr.
Rediscovering Erskine Caldwell (1975) by Morris Renek
True Myth-Maker of the Post-Bellum South (1975) by Calder Willingham
Repetition as Technique in the Short Stories of Erskine Caldwell (1977) by Scott MacDonald
The Comedy of Frustration (1977) by Richard Gray
Reasons for Reading, Studying, and Teaching Erskine Caldwell (1979) by Scott MacDonald
Is That You in the Mirror, Jeeter?: The Reader and Tobacco Road (1979) by Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr.
The Sacrilege of Alan Kent and the Apprenticeship of Erskine Caldwell (1979) by Guy Owen
Caldwell's Fiction: Growing Towards Trash? (1989) by Sylvia Jenkins Cook
Canonize Caldwell's Georgia Boy: A Case for Resurrection (1989) by Ronald Wesley Hoag
The Rhetoric of Exhaustion and the Exhaustion of Rhetoric: Erskine Caldwell in the Thirties (1993) by Jay Watson
Selected Bibliography
Index
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 26.8.1997 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Critical Responses in Arts and Letters |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 156 x 235 mm |
| Gewicht | 709 g |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft | |
| ISBN-13 | 9780313300721 / 9780313300721 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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