
Reading the Symptom
Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, and the Dynamics of Capitalism
Mohamed Zayani(Author)
Peter Lang Verlag
Will be published approx. on 1. December 1998
Book
Hardback
XII, 184 pages
978-0-8204-3910-5 (ISBN)
Description
Reading the Symptom is concerned with naturalism; it is also necessarily concerned with capitalism as the complex-structuring whole within which naturalism operates and from which it cannot be disengaged. Tightly connected with this polemic assertion is a methodological proposition: naturalism - and by extension capitalism - is characterized not only by its logic, but also by its asymmetrical dynamism. Focusing on Frank Norris's McTeague (and its companion piece Vandover and the Brute) and Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, this study argues that naturalism puts into question the very system it exemplifies. Naturalism has a transgressive element at its core, the appreciation of which calls for a special attention to the role and consequence of the emergent, the aleatory, and the stochastic. To explore the interplay between the systematic and the asystematic is not only to come to the conclusion that naturalism is an open, creative system, but also to realize that uneven development is the basic law of social formations.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Dimensions
Height: 23 cm
Width: 16 cm
Weight
460 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8204-3910-5 (9780820439105)
Schweitzer Classification
Person
The Author: Mohamed Zayani is Culver Tilden Professor of Literature and Critical Theory at Cape Cod College. He received his Ph.D. in English from Indiana University.