This innovative collection reinvents the standard American short fiction anthology and offers readers an invigorated, inclusive, and nuanced understanding of American literary history and culture from the Civil War to the end of World War I.
Beginning with one of Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches, originally published in 1863, this anthology offers a refreshing perspective on American literature from the latter half of the nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth. Based on Alcott’s brief stint as a Civil War nurse, Hospital Sketches stands in contrast to the sentimentality of her better-known Little Women and illustrates a blending of romanticism and realism. Furthermore, its thematic focus on the tension between idealized notions of noble, patriotic duty and the horrific reality of war exemplifies a dominant American cultural mindset at the time.
Following this model of complicating accepted ideas about realism and of particular authors, Reimagining Realism brings together dozens of texts that engage with the immense changes and upheavals that characterized American culture over the next six decades: war, abolition, voting rights, westward expansion, immigration, racism and ethnocentrism, industrial production, labor reforms, transportation, urban growth, journalism, mass media, education, and economic disparity.
Reimagining Realism presents a collection of works much more diverse than what is typically found in other anthologies of short fiction from this era. Some selections are lesser-known works by familiar authors that enable readers to see dimensions of these authors that are rarely considered but deserve further study. The book also features authors from many previously underrepresented groups and includes some outstanding works by authors whose names are almost completely unknown to today’s readers—but which deserve greater attention.
The volume’s editors, in their intent to spur readers to further reimagine realism, to represent the spectrum of viewpoints prevalent during this era, and to spark critical thinking and productive discussion, have been careful not to apply any type of political litmus test to the included works. They have also refrained from categorizing works according to convention, so as not to predispose readers to restrictive interpretations, and have provided only brief, highly readable headnotes and annotations that will help readers better understand the texts.
Spis treści
Contents
General Introduction
Jessica E. Mc Carthy
Introduction for Instructors
Charles A. Johanningsmeier
Chronology of Short Fictions’ Original Publication Dates
Short Fictions, Arranged Alphabetically by Author
Alcott, Louisa May
“Hospital Sketches: A Day” (1863)
Bierce, Ambrose
“The Affair at Coulter’s Notch” (1889)
Cable, George Washington
“Belles Demoiselles Plantation” (1874)
Cahan, Abraham
“The Daughter of Reb Avrom Leib” (1900)
Cather, Willa
“On the Divide” (1896)
Chesnutt, Charles
“The March of Progress” (1901)
Chopin, Kate
“A Gentleman of Bayou Têche” (1894)
Cleary, Kate
“Feet of Clay” (1893)
Crane, Stephen
“An Experiment in Misery” (1894)
Davis, Rebecca Harding
“A Day with Doctor Sarah” (1878)
Davis, Samuel Post
“A Christmas Carol” (late 1870s)
Dreiser, Theodore
“Free” (1918)
Dunbar, Paul Laurence
“One Man’s Fortunes” (1900)
“The Lynching of Jube Benson” (1904)
Dunbar Nelson, Alice
“Titee” (1895)
“When the Bayou Overflows” (1899)
Far, Sui Sin (Edith Maude Eaton)
“Sweet Sin” (1898)
“The Success of a Mistake” (1908)
Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins
“One Good Time” (1897)
“Old Woman Magoun” (1905)
Garland, Hamlin
“Up the Coulé” (1891)
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
“Mrs. Beazley’s Deeds” (1911)
Goodwin, C. C. (Charles Carroll)
“Sister Celeste” (1885)
Harte, Bret
“The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868)
“Wan Lee, the Pagan” (1874)
Hearn, Lafcadio
“In the Twilight of the Gods” (1895)
Henry, O. (William Sydney Porter)
“A Municipal Report” (1910)
Howells, William Dean
“A Romance of Real Life” (1870)
James, Henry
“The Jolly Corner” (1908)
Jewett, Sarah Orne
“Tom’s Husband” (1882)
“Stolen Pleasures” (1885)
King, Grace
“Making Progress” (1901)
London, Jack
“The League of the Old Men” (1902)
“The Apostate: A Child Labor Parable” (1906)
Macomber, Lucy Bates
“The Gossip of Gold Hill” (1873)
Mena, María Cristina
“The Education of Popo” (1914)
Neall, Hannah Lloyd
“Placer” (1871)
Norris, Frank
“The House with the Blinds” (1897)
Oskison, John
“The Problem of Old Harjo” (1907)
Peattie, Elia Wilkinson
“After the Storm: A Story of the Prairie” (1897)
Spofford, Harriet Prescott
“Her Story” (1872)
Stuart, Ruth Mc Enery
“The Unlived Life of Little Mary Ellen” (1896)
Thanet, Octave (Alice French)
“The Face of Failure” (1892)
Twain, Mark (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
“The Facts concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut” (1876)
“The Second Advent” (written 1881; first published 1972)
Wharton, Edith
“Xingu” (1911)
Wister, Owen
“Hank’s Woman” (1892)
Woolson, Constance Fenimore
“Miss Grief” (1880)
Zitkala-Ša (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin)
“The Soft-Hearted Sioux” (1900)
Principles of Text Selection
Bibliography of Textual Versions Used in This Anthology
Index
O autorze
Jessica E. Mc Carthy is a lecturer at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She has published on Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, and American literary naturalism.
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