American Boarding School Fiction, 1928-1981: A Critical Study

by Alexander H. Pitofsky

Overview

When boarding-school fiction became popular in the 19th century, it tended to be warm and nostalgic, filled with sporting events, practical jokes, and schemes to get even with campus bullies. All of that changed in the era discussed in this book. Holden Caulfield, the narrator of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, drops out of one prep school and is expelled from two others. The conflicts between students in John Knowles's Devon School novels become so heated that two young men die. And in the controversial novel Good Times/Bad Times, James Kirkwood portrays the headmaster of a private academy as closeted, deeply neurotic, and infatuated with an 18-year-old who has recently enrolled at his school.

In spite of their unsettling images of anguish and cruelty, these and other American boarding-school novels have attracted large audiences and influenced countless school narratives in fiction, drama, television and film. Many books have been written about British school stories. This is the first study that explores the history of boarding-school fiction in the United States.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476616629
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	07/18/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	574 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Alexander H. Pitofsky, a professor of English at Appalachian State University, has published articles on American novels in Twentieth Century Literature, Studies in American Culture, Papers on Language & Literature, The Mark Twain Annual, and other journals. He lives in Hickory, North Carolina.
Alexander H. Pitofsky, a professor of English at Appalachian State University, has published articles on American novels in Twentieth Century Literature, Studies in American Culture, Papers on Language & Literature, The Mark Twain Annual, and other journals. He lives in Hickory, North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: “The Freshest Boy” and the ­Prep-School Myth
1. Masculine Competition and ­Boarding-School Culture in The Catcher in the Rye
2. Unseen Academy: John Knowles’s A Separate Peace
3. Campus Politics and Endless Adolescence in The Rector of Justin
4. Sexuality, Gothic Melodrama, and ­Boarding-School Fiction: James Kirkwood’s Good Times/Bad Times
5. “That was what made the school so useless”: ­Anti-Prep Broadsides and A Good School
6. Isolation and Conflict in Tea and Sympathy and Peace Breaks Out
Conclusion: An Indestructible Myth
Chapter Notes
Works Cited
Index