Author Sue Monk Kidd, who is white, employs stereotypes of African Americans and problematically appropriates features of black writing in her novel "The Secret Life of Bees." Nevertheless, this book is worth teaching, not only because it has acquired much cultural capital but also because it offers students a way to examine relationships between…

Designed as a guide to scholarship and criticism of the contemporary American novel and related subjects, this selective bibliography includes 48 individual novelists. Omitted are unpublished dissertations, most literary histories, most bibliographies of bibliography, short notes and explications, and book reviews; but the listing does contain…

Considers the state of the art of publishing and how far it has gone astray from its original standards of literary excellence. (RK)

From its inauspicious beginnings as a men's store giveaway and a "girlie" magazine in 1933, "Esquire" magazine quickly established a policy of literary excellence. By 1945, the magazine included the works on such major literary figures as Erskine Caldwell, John Dos Passos, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Ring Lardner, James…

Text of Sejour's story "Le Mulatre" (The Mulatto) is included. (RS)

Suggests using Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" as a rhetorical exemplum in literature instruction. Calls upon instructors to identify Thoreau's writing purposes and intended audience. Suggests that students can explore the book's varied writing styles and narrative personae. Encourages analysis of the book's ethical, rational,…

The theme of homosexual officers lusting after innocent enlisted men has frequently appeared in English and American fiction since "Billy Budd"--almost always leading to tragic outcomes. (JH)

The purpose of this bibliography is to provide critical, literary commentaries on the works of American, British, and classical authors, found in general literature books. Selection of authors was accomplished on the basis of West Point military cadets' choices of topics for their annual English papers; alphabetical listings of citations (from…

Offered in this book is an Argentinian's view of the literary achievement of the United States. The beginning chapters discuss Mather, Edwards, and Freneau; Franklin, Cooper, and the historians; Hawthorne and Poe; and Whitman and Herman Melville. Other chapters are given to a discussion of three poets of the nineteenth century (Lanier, Whittier,…

This study of contemporary realistic fiction with settings outside the United States and characters who are citizens of other countries--appropriate for children aged nine through twelve years--sought to discover the differences between those by American authors and those by non-American authors. For the study, 35 books (24 by American authors and…

The present study, in an attempt to suggest factors which were at work in giving a man of such varied interests and predispositions the peculiar shape that they did, focuses upon the pathway that Wilson took during the 1920s, while questing for the mysteries of Axel's castle. (Author)

Contemplates the meaning and misunderstanding of the works of West Virginia author, Breece Pancake, who took his own life at age 26. Pancake used a "realistic" representation of a place to create an effect in his fiction, not to develop a regional image. Contains comments from other Appalachian writers concerning Pancake's work. (KS)

This paper analyzes non-Anglo views of the concept of justice; these views are different from those of the dominant Anglo-American tradition and therefore make up one of the components of ethnicity. The author examines justice as a concept in the literature of three contemporary American authors, the Italian American Pietro Di Donato, Nelson…

There are at least four reasons why the stereotype of Henry David Thoreau as an ascetic and a stoic have been perpetuated: (1) Emerson, in his eulogy of Thoreau, emphasized these qualities by saying, "Few lives contain so many renunciations...he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he…

The approximately 100 entries in this annotated bibliography comprise a list of reference sources useful for the study of United States literature, excluding drama and theatre. The entries are arranged according to the following categories: (1) guides; (2) literary handbooks, encyclopaedias, and dictionaries; (3) biographical sources; (4) indexes…