EXCERPTS: 1800s-2003
From Works on Political, Social, and Cultural Criticism of Imaginative Literature
(with an emphasis on the nature and role of propaganda)
note: I agree with much but not everything I’ve chosen to excerpt. As far as the books as a whole go – as they seem to me – many are very good, plenty are solid, some are mixed, some are less insightful or unfortunate in part. On the whole, in my judgment, the books make some thoughtful and useful exploration of imaginative literature and its relation to society, individuals and social and political change.
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PDF OF GREATLY EXPANDED BIBLIOGRAPHY AND EXCERPTS
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1864 – Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare
1883 –William Morris, On Art and Socialism
1885, 1888 –Frederick Engels, Letters
1898 –Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?
1903 –Frank Norris, The Responsibilities of the Novelist
1905 –Vladimir Lenin, “Party Organization and Party Literature,” in Novaia Jizn
1924 –Upton Sinclair, Mammonart: An Essay in Economic Interpretation
1926 –W.E.B. DuBois, African American Literary Criticism, 1773-2000
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1928 –Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
1931 –Edmund Wilson, Axel’s Castle
1932 –V. F. Calverton, The Liberation of American Literature
1934 –John Dewey, Art as Experience
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1935 –Joseph Freeman, Proletarian Literature in the United States
1936 -James T. Farrell, “Literature and Propaganda,” in A Note on Literary Criticism
1939 –Bernard Smith, Forces in Literary Critcism
1940 –Roger Dataller, The Plain Man and the Novel
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1941 –Kenneth Burke, “Literature as Equipment for Living,” The Philosophy of Literary Form
1941 –Kenneth Burke, “The Nature of Art Under Capitalism,” The Philosophy of Literary Form
1942 –Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds
1943 –George Orwell, “The Freedom of the Press”
1949 –James Baldwin, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” Notes of a Native Son (1955)
1950 –Ann Petry, “The Novel as Social Criticism,” African American Literary Criticism, 1773-2000
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1962 –Edwin Muir, The Estate of Poetry
1963 –Vernon Hall, Jr., A Short History of Literary Criticism
1963 –Robert E. Spiller, Ed. et. al., Literary History of the United States
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1965 –Eudora Welty, “Must the Novelist Crusade” (1965), in The Eye of the Story (1978)
1978 –John Colmer, “The Writer as Critic of Society,” Coleridge to Catch-22: Images of Society
1983 –A. P. Foulkes, Literature and Propaganda (from the Introduction and Conclusion)
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1987 -1999–Noam Chomsky, The Chomsky Reader, biographies, etc…
1988 –Vincent B. Leitch, American Literary Criticism from the 30s to the 80s
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1990 –Audre Lorde, Black Women Writers at Work
1993 –Barbara Foley, “Art or Propaganda,” in Radical Representations: Politics and Form in U.S.
Proletarian Fiction, 1929-1941
1995 –Jane Smiley, “Say It Ain’t So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain’s ‘Masterpiece’,”
Harpers
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2001 –James Wood, “Tell Me How Does It Feel?” The Guardian
2001 –James Wood, “Abhorring a Vacuum,” The New Republic
2002 –James Wood, “Unions,” The New Republic
2003 –Howard Zinn, Artists in Times of War
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Sequence of relatively recent literary commercial essays on the social novel:
1961 – Philip Roth, “Writing American Fiction,” Commentary, March, 1961 (also in Reading
Myself and Others, 1985)
1989 – Tom Wolfe, “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” Harpers, 1989
1995 – Jane Smiley, “Say It Ain’t So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain’s ‘Masterpiece’,”
Harpers, December 1995
1996 – Jonathan Franzen, “Perchance to Dream,” Harpers, 1996 [Revised, retitled as “Why
Bother?” in How to Be Alone, 2002]
2001 – James Wood, “Human, All Too Inhuman,” The New Republic, August 30, 2001;
“Abhorring a Vacuum,” The New Republic, October 18, 2001
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Bibliography – 1800s to 2003
Critical Excerpts – 1883 to 2003
Quick Views
Social and Political Novel
Social and Political Literature
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