A World Elsewhere: The Place of Style in American LiteratureOxford University Press, 1966 - 257 pages "A World Elsewhere offers entirely new possibilities for the understanding of American literature. Its originality consists in Mr. Poirier's emphasis on language, rather than on such other categories as myth, realism, romance, or on the merely technical aspects of style, as the proper focus of critical activity. He proposes that American writers, in their distaste for social systems and for the governing powers of time, biology, and economics tried to create in their works an environment freed of such restraints and congenial to the evolutionary expansion of human consciousness. This environment of freedom is brought into existence not by the use of any particular genre like the Romance, but only by the power of language..." - Book jacket. |
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A World Elsewhere: The Place of Style in American Literature Richard Poirier No preview available - 1985 |
Common terms and phrases
allowed already American literature American writers appearance Artist become calls Carrie Chapter characters claim consciousness conventions conversation Cooper create criticism defined describe Dreiser earlier early effect effort Emerson Emma English environment evidence existence experience expression fact feelings fiction finally forces freedom give given Hawthorne Hawthorne's hero Huck Huck's Huckleberry Finn human ideas images imagination interest James James's Jane Austen kind landscape language later less Lily literary live looking manner Mark Twain mean ment merely metaphoric MICHIGAN mind Miss moral nature needs never novel novelist offers once opening passage perhaps poet possession possible problem reader reality relation relationship remark reveal scene seems sense situation social society sounds story Strether struggle style suggests talk things Thoreau tion turn voice Wharton writers