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Loose ends : closure and crisis in the American social text

Author: Russell Reising
Publisher: Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press, 1996.
Series: New Americanists.
Edition/Format:   Book : English
Summary:
In this study of American cultural production from the colonial era to the present, Russell Reising takes up the loose ends of popular American narratives to craft a new theory of narrative closure. In the range of works examined here Reising finds endings that violate all existing theories of closure, and narratives that expose the often unarticulated issues that inspired these texts. Pursuing the implications of  Read more...
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Additional Physical Format: Online version:
Reising, Russell.
Loose ends.
Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press, 1996
(OCoLC)606115535
Named Person: Phillis Wheatley; Emily Dickinson; Henry James; Charles Brockden Brown; Herman Melville
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Russell Reising
ISBN: 0822318911 9780822318910 0822318873 9780822318873
OCLC Number: 34875703
Description: xii, 374 p. ; 24 cm.
Contents: Loose ends: aesthetic closure and social crisis --
"Seek and ye shall find"; or, Il nʼy a pas dedans du texte: Wieland, reference, history, anti-closure --
The whiteness of the Wheatleys: Phillis Wheatley's revolutionary poetics --
Fading out of print: Herman Melville's Israel Potter and the economy of literary history --
Emily Dickinson's Lost dog --
"The jolly corner": Henry James at the crossroads --
"The easiest room in hell": the political work of Disney's Dumbo.
Series Title: New Americanists.
Responsibility: Russell Reising.

Abstract:

In this study of American cultural production from the colonial era to the present, Russell Reising takes up the loose ends of popular American narratives to craft a new theory of narrative closure. In the range of works examined here Reising finds endings that violate all existing theories of closure, and narratives that expose the often unarticulated issues that inspired these texts. Pursuing the implications of these failed moments of closure, Reising elaborates on topics ranging from the roots of domestic violence and mass murder in early American religious texts to the pornographic imperative of mid-century nature writing, and from James's "descent" into naturalist and feminist fiction to Dumbo's explosive projection of commercial, racial, and political agendas for postwar U.S. culture.

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