Description |
1 online resource (280 pages) |
Contents |
Acknowledgments; Introduction: Writing the Accident; 1. The Insurance of the Real: William Dean Howells; 2. Aimless Battles: Stephen Crane; 3. Detecting "Absolute Chance" : Charles Peirce and Anna Katharine Green; 4. The Feminization of Chance: Edith Wharton and Crystal Eastman; 5. Performing the Accident on Purpose: Theodore Dreiser and James Cain; Notes; Index |
Summary |
This book argues that language and literature actively produced chance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by categorizing injuries and losses as innocent of design. Automobile collisions and occupational injuries became "car accidents" and "industrial accidents." During the post-Civil War period of racial, ethnic, and class-based hostility, chance was an abstract enemy against which society might unite. By producing chance, novels by William Dean Howells, Stephen Crane, Anna Katharine Green, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, and James Cain documented and helped establish new m |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
Notes |
Print version record |
Subject |
American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
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American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
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Chance in literature.
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Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century
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Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 20th century
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Realism in literature.
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American fiction
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Chance in literature
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Literature and society
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Realism in literature
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United States
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Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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History
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Form |
Electronic book
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ISBN |
9780804778459 |
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0804778450 |
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