Publication

1999 - Peter Lang, New York, New York (State)

Language

English

Word Count

46,000 words, Guess

Page Count

184 pages

Identifiers

and 1 more
  • Goodreads626054

Classifications

  • DDC813/.40912
  • LCCPS374.N29 Z39 1999

Description

Reading the Symptom is concerned with naturalism; it is also necessarily concerned with capitalism as the complex-structuring whole within which naturalism operates and from which it cannot be disengaged. Tightly connected with this polemic assertion is a methodological proposition: naturalismand by extension capitalism - is characterized not only by its logic, but also by its asymmetrical dynamism. Focusing on Frank Norris's McTeague (and its companion piece Vandover and the Brute) and Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, this study argues that naturalism puts into question the very system it exemplifies. Naturalism has a transgressive element at its core, the appreciation of which calls for a special attention to the role and consequence of the emergent, the aleatory, and the stochastic. To explore the interplay between the systematic and the asystematic is not only to come to the conclusion that naturalism is an open, creative system, but also to realize that uneven development is the basic law of social formations.

Subjects

Series Statement

  • Modern American literature : new approaches,

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