Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Nettels, Elsa, author.

Title Language, race, and social class in Howells's America / Elsa Nettels
Published Lexington : The University Press of Kentucky, 1988

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xi, 236 pages)
Contents Language in Howells's American -- "Good natural English" -- American and British English -- Realism and dialect -- The problem of "Negro dialect" in literaure -- Language, race and nationality in Howells's fiction -- Language and class in the early novels -- Language and lcass in novels of country and city -- Language and complicity in The Miniter's Charge -- Language and equality in the late novels
Summary No other American novelist has written so fully about language--grammar, diction, the place of colloquialism and dialect in literary English, the relation between speech and writing--as William Dean Howells. The power of language to create social, political, and racial identity was of central concern to Americans in the nineteenth century, and the implications of language in this regard are strikingly revealed in the writings of Howells, the most influential critic and editor of his age. In this first full-scale treatment of Howells as a writer about language, Elsa Nettels offers a historical overview of the social and political implications of language in post-Civil War America. Chapters on controversies about linguistic authority, American versus British English, literary dialect, and language and race relate Howells's ideas at every point to those of his contemporaries--from writers such as Henry James, Mark Twain, and James Russell Lowell to political figures such as Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and John Hay. The first book to analyze in depth and detail the language of Howells's characters in more than a dozen novels, this path-breaking sociolinguistic approach to Howells's fiction exposes the fundamental contradiction in his realism and in the America he portrayed. By representing the speech that separates standard from nonstandard speakers, Howells's novels--which champion the democratic ideals of equity and unity--also demonstrate the power of language to reinforce barriers of race and class in American society. Drawing on unpublished letters of Howells, James, Lowell, and others and on scores of articles in nineteenth-century periodicals, this work of literary criticism and cultural history reaches beyond the work of one writer to address questions of enduring importance to all students of American literature and society
Analysis Americanisms in literature
English language United States
Howells, William Dean Knowledge America
Language and languages in literature
National characteristics, American, in literature
Race in literature
Social classes in literature
Speech and social status United States
Notes Vendor-supplied metadata
Subject Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920 -- Knowledge
SUBJECT Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920 fast
Subject National characteristics, American, in literature.
Speech and social status -- United States
Language and languages in literature.
English language -- United States.
Social classes in literature.
Americanisms in literature.
Race in literature.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
Americanisms in literature
English language
Language and languages in literature
National characteristics, American, in literature
Race in literature
Social classes in literature
Speech and social status
United States
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780813161310
0813161312