Overview

Despite Stephen Crane's great interest in social themes of his time, few critics have analyzed the historical and political significance of his work. This book demonstrates that only an analysis capable of grasping the politics of Crane's texts can adequately account for their stylistic and aesthetic qualities. Focusing on Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and The Red Badge of Courage, as well as on seldom studied bestsellers of the American 1890s such as R.H. Davis's Soldiers of Fortune and F.M. Crawford's Via Crucis, it offers new insights into the formal and ideological relationship of Crane's fiction to popular literature.

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9780820418759

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Reviews

'Spectacular Narratives' is doubly remarkable, both as an important re-interpretation of Stephen Crane's major fiction and as a model of the current historical and cultural criticism. Giorgio Mariani's elegant, lucid essay sees Crane caught in the crossfire of his age, an ironic debunker of the jingoistic popular culture whose writing in vivid dispatches and in 'The Red Badge of Courages' is inspired by the spectacle of war to make war into a spectacle. This subtle and intelligent study demonstrates again that texts cannot be read apart from the drama of their writing. (Myra Jehlen, University of Pennsylvania)Giorgio Mariani's reading of Stephen Crane is both original and highly illuminating. He skillfully traces a complex web of interactions between genre and text, as well as between textual criticism and socio-historical interpretation. The result is a significant advance in our understanding not only of a major American author, but of a whole cultural and historical phase as well. (Alessandro Portelli, University of Rome)

Author Information

The author: Giorgio Mariani teaches American Literature at the University of Salerno, Italy. He received a Ph.D. from both Rutgers University and the University of Rome. The author of a book on the politics of Herman Melville's reputation entitled Allegorie impossibili: storia e strategie della critica melvilliana, he has also published numerous articles and reviews and is currently working on a new book on war and literature.

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