Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860

by Jane Tompkins

Overview

In this provocative book, Jane Tompkins seeks to move the study of literature away from the small group of critically approved texts that have dominated literary discussion over the decades, to allow inclusion of texts ignored or denigrated by the literary academy. Sensational Designs challenges comfortable assumptions about what makes a literary work a "classic."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190281373
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/29/1986
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	347 KB

Editorial Reviews

"One of the important works of the year....Contains some of the best arguments I know on the conventionality of canon formation."—Michael J. Hoffman, American Literary Scholarship

"Wide-ranging, clearly written, cogently argued.... One of those stimulating and significant seminal studies sure to be frequently cited."—Choice.

"A major reassessment of nineteenth-century 'sentimental' novels...Force[s] us to reconsider on every page our usual notions of literary valuation, interpretive bias, and canon formation."—Western Humanities Review

"Sensational Designs...is an eye-opener for those too much obsessed by their own academic and cultural investments to understand the true stylistic and ideological complexity of nineteenth-century American fiction."—Philip F. Gura, Esquire

"A cogently argued redefinition of the entire process of literary study."—Women's Review of Books

From the Publisher