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14 results

  • Introduction: contemporary formations

  • from PART FOUR - CONTEMPORARY FORMATIONS
  • Edited by Leonard Cassuto, Fordham University, New York
  • Edited in association with Clare Virginia Eby, University of Connecticut, Benjamin Reiss, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the American Novel
    Published online:
    28 July 2011
    Print publication:
    24 March 2011, pp 957-963

  • Summary

    Mikhail Bakhtin wrote almost a century ago that “the novel is the sole genre that continues to develop, that is as yet uncompleted. The forces that define it as a genre are at work before our very eyes.”1 But even Bakhtin would have been surprised by some of the changes the novel has undergone in recent years. In the volume's final section of dealing with contemporary formations of the American novel, Robert Coover sees video games marching forth from the arcade and the ones and zeros of executable code spilling out from the computer to transform our sense of what literary narrative can do. DeNel Rehberg Sedo examines how mass media and the internet (as well as government-sponsored reading groups) have helped form new kinds of interactive reading communities; some of these are beginning to shape what gets published, how it gets marketed, and to whom. And Jan Baetens shows how even such a low-tech phenomenon as comics – the most sophisticated of which have been “knocking on literature's door” for decades – have now found an unlikely welcome in the house of the novel, in the process subtly eroding our baseline sense of the novel as “a narrative work of verbal fiction between two covers.”

    Despite all of these changes, the novel's extraordinary powers of absorption and formal flexibility allow it to continue to perform its traditional function: to picture and reflect upon the broader transformations of the world surrounding it.

  • Introduction: inventing the American novel

  • from PART ONE - INVENTING THE AMERICAN NOVEL
  • Edited by Leonard Cassuto, Fordham University, New York
  • Edited in association with Clare Virginia Eby, University of Connecticut, Benjamin Reiss, Emory University, Atlanta
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the American Novel
    Published online:
    28 July 2011
    Print publication:
    24 March 2011, pp 15-21

  • Summary

    Sandra Gustafson's chapter in this section begins with the image of a map of North America in 1715 that shows the familiar British colonies abutting territories identified as French, Spanish, Iroquois, Apachee, Kikapou, Illinese, Esquimaux, Mozeemleck, and even Danish – picturing “a mixture of the familiar, the less familiar, the unknown, and the fantastic.” The map is a fitting backdrop not only for the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, the main subject of her chapter, but also for other fictional works that attempted to bring order to the chaotic and often violent conditions of life in the New World.

    The map can also remind us that while literary historians – and a great many novelists themselves – have long seen the development of the novel as tied up with the history of nations, both nations and novels have origins far more complex than any simple linear narrative or national map can convey. And so while the hunt for the origins of the American novel has tended to stress indigenous forms, themes, settings, and other patterns that reinforce exceptionalist models of US literary history, we do best, as Paul Giles suggests in the opening chapter of this book, to map the American novel onto a broader swath of the globe. Specifically, Giles argues, “cultural traffic across the Atlantic in both directions” shaped a number of literary conventions, themes, and formats out of which later critics and writers would try to find patterns suggestive of a national tradition.

The Cambridge History of the American Novel
  • Edited by Leonard Cassuto
  • Edited in association with Clare Virginia Eby, Benjamin Reiss
  • Published online:
    28 July 2011
    Print publication:
    24 March 2011
  • This ambitious literary history traces the American novel from its emergence in the late eighteenth century to its diverse incarnations in the multi-ethnic, multi-media culture of the present day. In a set of original essays by renowned scholars from all over the world, the volume extends important critical debates and frames new ones. Offering new views of American classics, it also breaks new ground to show the role of popular genres - such as science fiction and mystery novels - in the creation of the literary tradition. One of the original features of this book is the dialogue between the essays, highlighting cross-currents between authors and their works as well as across historical periods. While offering a narrative of the development of the genre, the History reflects the multiple methodologies that have informed readings of the American novel and will change the way scholars and readers think about American literary history.

  • Image motion and context: A between- and within-subjects comparison

  • ROBERT F. SIMONS, BENJAMIN H. DETENBER, JASON E. REISS, CHRISTOPHER W. SHULTS
  • Journal:
    Psychophysiology / Volume 37 / Issue 5 / September 2000
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 October 2000, pp. 706-710
    Print publication:
    September 2000

  • In two previous experiments, we studied how stimulus motion affects both the self-report of emotion experience and the physiological sequelae of emotion. In both studies, image motion intensified emotional responding, and the effect of motion was relatively specific to the arousal dimension of the emotion; there was little evidence that image motion altered the valence of the image. Moving images also appeared to sustain the attention of the participants for a longer period of time than did the still images. In these two experiments, however, image motion was manipulated within participants. In the present experiment, we used a between-subjects manipulation of image motion and found a nearly identical pattern of results. These data indicate that motion inherently increments the arousal value of an image and that this increment is not dependent on the context in which motion is introduced.

  • Emotion processing in three systems: The medium and the message

  • ROBERT F. SIMONS, BENJAMIN H. DETENBER, THOMAS M. ROEDEMA, JASON E. REISS
  • Journal:
    Psychophysiology / Volume 36 / Issue 5 / September 1999
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 September 1999, pp. 619-627
    Print publication:
    September 1999

  • In the context of picture viewing, consistent and specific relationships have been found between two emotion dimensions (valence and arousal) and self-report, physiological and overt behavioral responses. Relationships between stimulus content and the emotion-response profile can also be modulated by the formal properties of stimulus presentation such as screen size. The present experiment explored the impact of another presentation attribute, stimulus motion, on the perceived quality of the induced emotion and on its associated physiological response pattern. Using a within-subject design, moving and still versions of emotion-eliciting stimuli were shown to 35 subjects while facial muscle, heart rate, skin conductance, and emotion self-reports were monitored. The impact of motion was dramatic. Self-report and physiological data suggested strongly that motion increased arousal, had little impact on valence, and captured and sustained the subject's attention to the image.