19th century american history
19th century american literature
A01=Gavin Jones
abraham cahan
aesthetic politics
american dialect
american english
american vernacular
Author_Gavin Jones
Category=CFFD
Category=DSB
Category=DSBF
Category=DSK
cult of the vernacular
cultural dissolution
dialect
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
foreign immigration
george washington cable
henry james
herman melville
local color
mark twain
minority dialect
moral degeneration
multiculturalism
paul laurence dunbar
race in america
racial oppression
realism
realist literature
realist novels
stephen crane
urban life
Product details
- ISBN 9780520214217
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 19 Oct 1999
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Late-nineteenth-century America was crazy about dialect: vernacular varieties of American English entertained mass audiences in "local color" stories, in realist novels, and in poems and plays. But dialect was also at the heart of anxious debates about the moral degeneration of urban life, the ethnic impact of foreign immigration, the black presence in white society, and the female influence on masculine authority. Celebrations of the rustic raciness in American vernacular were undercut by fears that dialect was a force of cultural dissolution with the power to contaminate the dominant language. In this volume, Gavin Jones explores the aesthetic politics of this neglected "cult of the vernacular" in little-known regionalists such as George Washington Cable, in the canonical work of Mark Twain, Henry James, Herman Melville, and Stephen Crane, and in the ethnic writing of Abraham Cahan and Paul Laurence Dunbar. He reveals the origins of a trend that deepened in subsequent literature: the use of minority dialect to formulate a political response to racial oppression, and to enrich diverse depictions of a multicultural nation.
Gavin Jones is Assistant Professor of English at Stanford University.
