Adulthood and Other Fictions - American Literature and the Unmaking of Age

List of contents

• Introduction


• 1: 'May I Never Be a Man': Immaturity in Melville's America


• 2: Peculiar Forms of Aging in the Literature of US Slavery


• 3: Little Women, Overgrown Children, and the Problem of Female Maturity


• 4: Over the Hill and Out of Sight: Locating Old Age in Regionalism


• 5: Beyond Mastery: Undoing Adulthood in the Work of Henry James


• Coda

About the author

Sari Edelstein teaches in the English Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is the author of Between the Novel and the News: The Emergence of American Women's Writing (2014), and her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous academic journals, including American Literature, Legacy, ESQ, and Studies in American Fiction.

Summary

This volume explores the idea of age in American literature over the course of the nineteenth century and examines how writers such as Louisa May Alcott, Frederick Douglass, and Henry James used literature as a space to imagine alternative ideas about aging and to challenge conventional definitions of adulthood.

Additional text

In this beautifully written book, rife with sharp observations, Edelstein contributes to the growing body of scholarship on cultural constructions of age, adulthood, and life stages. Her book will particularly appeal to American cultural historians and literary scholars.

Product details

• Authors: Sari Edelstein, Sari (Associate Professor Edelstein, Edelstein Sari
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 10.01.2019
• EAN: 9780198831884
• ISBN: 978-0-19-883188-4
• No. of pages: 224
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 19th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Children's & Young Adult Literature, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Literary theory, Children's literature studies: general, Children’s and teenage literature studies: general