U.S. & Canadian Poetry - 19th Century - Literary Criticism, Society & Culture in Literature, Literary Criticism - U.S. Fiction & Prose Literature - General & Miscellaneous, Rhetoric, African American Literature - Literary Criticism, 20th Century American

Loose Ends

Name: Loose Ends
Author: Russell Reisling
ISBN: 9780822318910

by Russell Reisling

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Overview

In this study of American cultural production from the colonial era to the present, Russell Reising takes up the loose ends of popular American narratives to craft a new theory of narrative closure. In the range of works examined here Reising finds endings that violate all existing theories of closure, and narratives that expose the often unarticulated issues that inspired these texts. Pursuing the implications of these failed moments of closure, Reising elaborates on topics ranging from the roots of domestic violence and mass murder in early American religious texts to the pornographic imperative of mid-century nature writing, and from James's "descent" into naturalist and feminist fiction to Dumbo's explosive projection of commercial, racial, and political agendas for postwar U.S. culture.

About the Author, Russell Reisling

Russell Reising is Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Toledo. He is the author of The Unusable Past: Theory and the Study of American Literature.