Download or read book A Political Companion to John Steinbeck written by Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though he was a recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, American novelist John Steinbeck (1902--1968) has frequently been censored. Even in the twenty-first century, nearly ninety years after his work first appeared in print, Steinbeck's novels, stories, and plays still generate controversy: his 1937 book Of Mice and Men was banned in some Mississippi schools in 2002, and as recently as 2009, he made the American Library Association's annual list of most frequently challenged authors. A Political Companion to John Steinbeck examines the most contentious political aspects of the author's body of work, from his early exploration of social justice and political authority during the Great Depression to his later positions regarding domestic and international threats to American policies. Featuring contemporaneous and present-day interpretations of his novels and essays by historians, literary scholars, and political theorists, this book covers the spectrum of Steinbeck's writing, exploring everything from his place in American political culture to his seeming betrayal of his leftist principles in later years.
Download or read book A Political Companion to Herman Melville written by Jason Frank and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Herman Melville is widely considered to be one of America's greatest authors, and countless literary theorists and critics have studied his life and work. However, political theorists have tended to avoid Melville, turning rather to such contemporaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau to understand the political thought of the American Renaissance. While Melville was not an activist in the traditional sense and his philosophy is notoriously difficult to categorize, his work is nevertheless deeply political in its own right. As editor Jason Frank notes in his introduction to A Political Companion to Herman Melville, Melville's writing "strikes a note of dissonance in the pre-established harmonies of the American political tradition." This unique volume explores Melville's politics by surveying the full range of his work -- from Typee (1846) to the posthumously published Billy Budd (1924). The contributors give historical context to Melville's writings and place him in conversation with political and theoretical debates, examining his relationship to transcendentalism and contemporary continental philosophy and addressing his work's relevance to topics such as nineteenth-century imperialism, twentieth-century legal theory, the anti-rent wars of the 1840s, and the civil rights movement. From these analyses emerges a new and challenging portrait of Melville as a political thinker of the first order, one that will establish his importance not only for nineteenth-century American political thought but also for political theory more broadly.
Download or read book A Political Companion to James Baldwin written by Susan J. McWilliams and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In seminal works such as Go Tell It on the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, and The Fire Next Time, acclaimed author and social critic James Baldwin (1924–1987) expresses his profound belief that writers have the power to transform society, to engage the public, and to inspire and channel conversation to achieve lasting change. While Baldwin is best known for his writings on racial consciousness and injustice, he is also one of the country's most eloquent theorists of democratic life and the national psyche. In A Political Companion to James Baldwin, a group of prominent scholars assess the prolific author's relevance to present-day political challenges. Together, they address Baldwin as a democratic theorist, activist, and citizen, examining his writings on the civil rights movement, religion, homosexuality, and women's rights. They investigate the ways in which his work speaks to and galvanizes a collective American polity, and explore his views on the political implications of individual experience in relation to race and gender. This volume not only considers Baldwin's works within their own historical context, but also applies the author's insights to recent events such as the Obama presidency and the Black Lives Matter movement, emphasizing his faith in the connections between the past and present. These incisive essays will encourage a new reading of Baldwin that celebrates his significant contributions to political and democratic theory.
Download or read book A Political Companion to W E B Du Bois written by Nick Bromell and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2018-03-16 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary scholars and historians have long considered W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) an extremely influential writer and a powerful cultural critic. The author of more than one hundred books, hundreds of published articles, and founding editor of the NAACP journal The Crisis, Du Bois has been widely studied for his profound insights on the politics of race and class in America. An activist as well as a scholar, Du Bois proclaimed, "I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy." In A Political Companion to W. E. B. Du Bois, Nick Bromell assembles essays from both new and established scholars from a variety of disciplines to explore Du Bois's contributions to American political thought. The contributors establish a conceptual context within which to read the author, revealing how richly and variously he engaged with the aesthetic and theological modalities of political thinking and action. This volume further reveals how Du Bois's work challenges and revises contemporary political theory, providing commentary on the author's strengths and limitations as a theorist for the twenty-first century. In doing so, it helps readers gain an understanding of how Du Bois's work and life continue to stimulate lively and constructive debate about the theory and practice of democracy in America.
Download or read book A Political Companion to Philip Roth written by Claudia Franziska Brühwiler and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2017-06-23 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Roth is widely acknowledged as one of the twentieth century's most prolific and acclaimed writers. Roth's first novel, Goodbye, Columbus (1959), received the National Book Award, and he followed this stunning debut with more than thirty books—earning another National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle awards, three PEN/Faulkner Awards, and the Pulitzer Prize. Throughout his career, Roth delighted in controversy but often denied that he sought a role as a public intellectual. His statements and vigorous support of suppressed writers in communist Czechoslovakia, however, tell a different story. In A Political Companion to Philip Roth, established and rising scholars explore the myriad political themes in the author's work. Several of the contributors examine Roth's writings on Jewish identity, Zionism, and American attitudes toward Israel, as well as the influence of his work in other countries. Others investigate Roth's articulation of the roles of gender and sexuality in US culture. This interdisciplinary examination offers a more complete portrait of Roth as a public intellectual and cultural icon. Not only will it fill a gap in scholarship, but it will also provide a broader perspective on the nature and purpose of the acclaimed writer's political thought.
Download or read book A Political Companion to Flannery O Connor written by Henry T. Edmondson III and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2017-07-21 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed author and Catholic thinker Flannery O'Connor (1925–1964) penned two novels, two collections of short stories, various essays, and numerous book reviews over the course of her life. Her work continues to fascinate, perplex, and inspire new generations of readers and poses important questions about human nature, ethics, social change, equality, and justice. Although political philosophy was not O'Connor's pursuit, her writings frequently address themes that are not only crucial to American life and culture, but also offer valuable insight into the interplay between fiction and politics. A Political Companion to Flannery O'Connor explores the author's fiction, prose, and correspondence to reveal her central ideas about political thought in America. The contributors address topics such as O'Connor's affinity with writers and philosophers including Eric Voegelin, Edith Stein, Russell Kirk, and the Agrarians; her attitudes toward the civil rights movement; and her thoughts on controversies over eugenics. Other essays in the volume focus on O'Connor's influences, the principles underlying her fiction, and the value of her work for understanding contemporary intellectual life and culture. Examining the political context of O'Connor's life and her responses to the critical events and controversies of her time, this collection offers meaningful interpretations of the political significance of this influential writer's work.
Download or read book A Political Companion to Marilynne Robinson written by Shannon L. Mariotti and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marilynne Robinson is arguably one of the most important writers of our time. Her voice resonates across the richly imagined American landscapes within which she grounds her stories of love and loss, alienation and belonging, injustice and redemption. Robinson's award-winning body of work -- including Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award -- has cultivated admiration all over the world, offering readers new and profound interpretations of the meanings of transience, presence, convention, and resistance. In A Political Companion to Marilynne Robinson, Shannon L. Mariotti and Joseph H. Lane Jr. assemble both rising and established political theorists to explore the juxtaposition of Robinson's nonfiction works and her novels, and to examine their connections to contemporary political issues. The collection analyzes Robinson's writings on American democracy, community, and freedom, and it includes an engrossing interview with the author specifically conducted for this volume. From an exploration of the democratic potential in being a "housekeeper of homelessness" to a study of models of action against racial injustice, this volume provides fascinating new insights into Robinson's work and how it reflects and reassesses American political culture and theory.
Download or read book A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass written by Neil Roberts and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2018-06-29 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was a prolific writer and public speaker whose impact on American literature and history has been long studied by historians and literary critics. Yet as political theorists have focused on the legacies of such notables as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, Douglass's profound influence on Afro-modern and American political thought has often been undervalued. In an effort to fill this gap in the scholarship on Douglass, editor Neil Roberts and an exciting group of established and rising scholars examine the author's autobiographies, essays, speeches, and novella. Together, they illuminate his genius for analyzing and articulating core American ideals such as independence, liberation, individualism, and freedom, particularly in the context of slavery. The contributors explore Douglass's understanding of the self-made American and the way in which he expanded the notion of individual potential by arguing that citizens had a responsibility to improve not only their own situations but also those of their communities. A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass also considers the idea of agency, investigating Douglass's passionate insistence that every person in a democracy, even a slave, possesses an innate ability to act. Various essays illuminate Douglass's complex racial politics, deconstructing what seems at first to be his surprising aversion to racial pride, and others explore and critique concepts of masculinity, gender, and judgment in his oeuvre. The volume concludes with a discussion of Douglass's contributions to pre– and post–Civil War jurisprudence.
Download or read book A Political Companion to Saul Bellow written by Gloria L. Cronin and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saul Bellow is one of the twentieth century's most influential, respected, and honored writers. His novels The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and Mr. Sammler's Planet won the National Book Award, and Humboldt's Gift was awarded the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In addition, his plays garnered popular and critical acclaim, and some were produced on Broadway. Known for his insights into life in a post-Holocaust world, Bellow's explorations of modernity, Jewish identity, and the relationship between art and society have resonated with his readers, but because his writing is not overtly political, his politics have largely been ignored. A Political Companion to Saul Bellow examines the author's novels, essays, short stories, and letters in order to illuminate his evolution from liberal to neoconservative. It investigates Bellow's exploration of the United States as a democratic system, the religious and ideological influences on his work, and his views on race relations, religious identity, and multiculturalism in the academy. Featuring a fascinating conclusion that draws from interviews with Bellow's sons, this accessible companion is an excellent resource for understanding the political thought of one of America's most acclaimed writers.
Download or read book Travels with Charley in Search of America written by John Steinbeck and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1997-04-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers A Penguin Classic In September 1960, John Steinbeck embarked on a journey across America. He felt that he might have lost touch with the country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people. To reassure himself, he set out on a voyage of rediscovery of the American identity, accompanied by a distinguished French poodle named Charley; and riding in a three-quarter-ton pickup truck named Rocinante. His course took him through almost forty states: northward from Long Island to Maine; through the Midwest to Chicago; onward by way of Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana (with which he fell in love), and Idaho to Seattle, south to San Francisco and his birthplace, Salinas; eastward through the Mojave, New Mexico, Arizona, to the vast hospitality of Texas, to New Orleans and a shocking drama of desegregation; finally, on the last leg, through Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to New York. Travels with Charley in Search of America is an intimate look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his life—a self-portrait of a man who never wrote an explicit autobiography. Written during a time of upheaval and racial tension in the South—which Steinbeck witnessed firsthand—Travels with Charley is a stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade. This Penguin Classics edition includes an introduction by Jay Parini. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Download or read book The Pull of Politics written by Milton A. Cohen and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late 1930s, John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, and Ernest Hemingway wrote novels that won critical acclaim and popular success: The Grapes of Wrath, Native Son, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. All three writers were involved with the Left at the time, and that commitment informed their fiction. Milton Cohen examines their motives for involvement with the Left; their novels’ political themes; and why they separated from the Left after the novels were published. These writers were deeply conflicted about their political commitments, and Cohen explores the tensions that arose between politics and art, resulting in the abandonment of a political attachment.
Download or read book Reclaiming John Steinbeck written by Gavin Jones and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-10 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Steinbeck is a towering figure in twentieth-century American literature; yet he remains one of our least understood writers. This major reevaluation of Steinbeck by Gavin Jones uncovers a timely thinker who confronted the fate of humanity as a species facing climate change, environmental crisis, and a growing divide between the powerful and the marginalized. Driven by insatiable curiosity, Steinbeck's work crossed a variety of borders – between the United States and the Global South, between human and nonhuman lifeforms, between science and the arts, and between literature and film – to explore the transformations in consciousness necessary for our survival on a precarious planet. Always seeking new forms to express his ecological and social vision of human interconnectedness and vulnerability, Steinbeck is a writer of urgent concern for the twenty-first century, even as he was haunted by the legacies of racism and injustice in the American West.
Download or read book Capitalism and Commerce in Imaginative Literature written by Edward W. Younkins and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-03-07 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiction can be a powerful force to educate students and employees in ways that lectures, textbooks, articles, case studies, and other traditional teaching approaches cannot. This anthology includes articles from a number of individuals from a range of different disciplines and perspectives. All of the contributors to Capitalism and Commerce in Imaginative Literature are committed to treating literary texts with integrity and believe that business should have a larger claim upon people’s literary consciousness. In addition, they all value the important role of literature in dealing with the complexities of a capitalist culture. This collection of essays provides a means to appreciate the richness and variety of fictional portrayals of businesses and businesspersons. The works selected for examination reflect the variety of philosophical, political, economic, cultural, social, and ethical perspectives that have been found over time in American society. The novels and plays analyzed include high literature, mid-range literature, popular literature, ancient epics, grand narratives, hero tales, masterpieces, ideological texts, science fiction, and more. There are a great many works of literature waiting to be read and studied by business and economically-minded individuals from many different viewpoints and fields of study. This volume provides a space to explore a wide range of fictional works and opinions about them.
Download or read book John Steinbeck written by Linda Wagner-Martin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to both describe and analyze the way Steinbeck learned the writing craft. It begins with his immersion in the short story, some years after he stopped attending Stanford University. Aside from a weak first novel, his professional writing career began with the publication in 1932 of The Pastures of Heaven, stories set in the Salinas Valley and dedicated to his parents. From that book he wrote truly commanding stories such as The Red Pony. Intermixed with Steinbeck’s journalism about California’s labor difficulties, his writing skill led to his 1930 masterpieces, Of Mice and Men, In Dubious Battle, and The Grapes of Wrath. The latter novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1940, led eventually to his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He continued producing such wide-ranging works as The Pearl, East of Eden, The Winter of Our Discontent, and Travels with Charley up to just a few months before his death in 1968.
Download or read book Steinbeck s Imaginarium written by Robert DeMott and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Steinbeck’s Imaginarium, Robert DeMott delves into the imaginative, creative, and sometimes neglected aspects of John Steinbeck’s writing. DeMott positions Steinbeck as a prophetic voice for today as much as he was for the Depression-era 1930s as the essays explore the often unknown or unacknowledged elements of Steinbeck’s artistic career that deserve closer attention. He writes about the determining scientific influences, such as quantum physics and ecology, in Cannery Row and considers Steinbeck’s addiction to writing through the lens of the extensive, obsessive full-length journals that he kept while writing three of his best-known novels—The Grapes of Wrath, The Wayward Bus, and East of Eden. DeMott insists that these monumental works of fiction all comprise important statements on his creative process and his theory of fiction writing. DeMott further blends his personal experience as a lifelong angler with a reading of several neglected fishing episodes in Steinbeck’s work. Collectively, the chapters illuminate John Steinbeck as a fully conscious, self-aware, literate, experimental novelist whose talents will continue to warrant study and admiration for years to come.
Download or read book Citizen Steinbeck written by Robert McParland and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-09-29 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Steinbeck is one of the most popular and important writers in American literature. Novels such as The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men,and East of Eden and the journal Travels with Charley convey the core of Steinbeck’s work—fiction that is reflective and compassionate. The Nobel prize winner cared deeply about people, and his writing captured the spirit, determination, and willingness of individuals to fight for their rights and the rights of others. His art of caring is critical for today’s readers and as a touchstone for our collective future. In Citizen Steinbeck: Giving Voice to the People, Robert McParland explains how the author’s work helps readers engage in moral reflection and develop empathy. McParland also looks at the ways educators around the world have used Steinbeck’s writings—both fiction and nonfiction—to impart ideals of compassion and social justice. These ideals are weaved into all of Steinbeck’s work, including his journalism and theatrical productions. Drawing on these texts—as well as interviews with secondary-level teachers—this book shows how Steinbeck’s work prompts readers to think critically and contextually about our values. Demonstrating the power a single author can have on generations of individuals around the world, Citizen Steinbeck enables readers to make sense of both the past and the present through the prism of this literary icon’s inspirational work.
Download or read book In Dubious Battle written by John Steinbeck and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-05-30 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting novel of labor strife and apocalyptic violence, now a major motion picture starring James Franco, Bryan Cranston, Selena Gomez, and Zach Braff A Penguin Classic At once a relentlessly fast-paced, admirably observed novel of social unrest and the story of a young man's struggle for identity, In Dubious Battle is set in the California apple country, where a strike by migrant workers against rapacious landowners spirals out of control, as a principled defiance metamorphoses into blind fanaticism. Caught in the upheaval is Jim Nolan, a once aimless man who find himself in the course of the strike, briefly becomes its leader, and is ultimately crushed in its service. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
