Research Catalog

Title

The center of the world : regional writing and the puzzles of place-time / June Howard.

Author

Howard, June

Publication

• Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2018.
• ©2018

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xix, 256 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color); 25 cm.

Summary

Regional Writing and the Puzzles of Place-Time is a study of literary regionalism. It focuses on the fiction of the United States and considers the place of the genre in world literature. Regionalism is usually understood to be a literature bound to the local, but this study explores how regional writing shapes ways of imagining not only the neighborhood or the province, but also the nation, and ultimately the world. Its key premise is that thinking about place always entails imagining time. It analyzes how concepts crystallize across disciplines and in everyday discourse and proposes ways of revising American literary history and close readings of particular authors' work. It demonstrates, for example, the importance of the figure of the school-teacher and the one-room schoolhouse in local color and subsequent place-focused writing. Such representations embody the contested relation in modernity between localities and the knowledge they produce, and books that carry metropolitan and cosmopolitan learning. The volume discusses fiction from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, including works by Sui Sin Far/Edith Eaton, Sarah Orne Jewett, Ernest Gaines, Wendell Berry, and Ursula LeGuin as well as romance novels and regional mysteries.

Series Statement

Oxford studies in American literary history

Uniform Title

Oxford studies in American literary history.

Alternative Title

Regional writing and the puzzles of place-time

Subjects

• American literature
• Literature and society
• American literature > 20th century > History and criticism
• Regionalism in literature
• American literature > 21st century > History and criticism
• Communities in literature
• Literature and society > United States > History
• History
• 1800-2099
• American literature > 19th century > History and criticism
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• United States

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-244) and index.

Call Number

JFE 19-1238

ISBN

• 9780198821397
• 0198821395

LCCN

2018939594

OCLC

1044553272

Author

Howard, June, author.

Title

The center of the world : regional writing and the puzzles of place-time / June Howard.

Publisher

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2018.

Copyright Date

©2018

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Oxford studies in American literary history

Oxford studies in American literary history.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-244) and index.

Chronological Term

1800-2099

Research Call Number

JFE 19-1238