Modern American Literature

An incisive study of modern American literature, casting new light on its origins and themes. Exploring canonical American writers such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner alongside less familiar writers like Djuna Barnes and Susan Glaspell, the guide takes readers though a diverse literary landscape. It considers how the rise of the American metropolis contributed to the growth of American modernism; and also examines the ways in which regional writers responded to an accelerated American modernity. Taking in African American modernism, cultural and geographical exile, as well as developments in modern American drama, the guide introduces readers to current critical trends in modernist studies. Key Features *Presents American literary modernism as emerging from a broad intellectual and philosophical landscape *Extends the timeframe, definition and intellectual parameters of American modernism *Provides close critical and contextual analysis of more than thirty American writers and key texts including Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Djuna Barnes's Nightwood, and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land

Catherine Morley is Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Leicester. She is the author of The Quest for Epic in Contemporary American Literature (2009) and co-editor of American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century (2008) and American Modernism: Cultural Transactions (2009).