The aesthetics of middlebrow fiction : popular US novels, modernism, and form, 1945-75

Author(s)

    • Perrin, Tom

Bibliographic Information

The aesthetics of middlebrow fiction : popular US novels, modernism, and form, 1945-75

Tom Perrin

Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

  • : hardback

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [171]-191) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

During the Cold War, many popular American novels were labelled "middlebrow," leading to a general belief that these texts held less intellectual merit. Perrin debunks these unfair assumptions through works by James Michener, Harper Lee, and Leon Uris, arguing that such writers made a major contribution to the tradition of American literature.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Remake it New 1. The Old Men and the ' 'Sea of Masscult ' ': T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and the Middlebrow Aesthetic 2. ' 'It Offers No Solutions ' ': Ambivalence and Aesthetics in the Social Problem Novel 3. Rebuilding Bildung: The Novel of Aesthetic Education 4. The Second-Greatest Stories Ever Told: Middlebrow Epics of 1959 and the Aesthetics of Disavowal 5. Book Smarts: Masochism and Popular Postmodernism Conclusion

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