America(n) matters
Subtitle: selected essays
By: Peter Freese ; edited by Michael Mitchell, Markus Wierschem
Series: American studies -- volume 283; American studies (Munich, Germany) -- v. 283.
Publisher: Universitätsverlag Winter
Published: 2018
Place of publication: Heidelberg
Language: eng
Number of pages: 599
ISBN-13: 9783825368524
Copyright date: 2018
Subjects: American literature; History and criticism; National characteristics, American, in literature; Civilization
Work titles: Essays
Description: This anthology brings together 21 of the more than 200 articles and essays published between 1977 and 2017 by Professor Peter Freese from the University of Paderborn, one of the most distinguished authorities on American literature and culture within Germany and beyond. Arranged in four broad thematic sections covering the "matters of America", the essays range widely across a vista of subjects, writers, concepts and contexts, from the evolution of the American Dream to the visions of end times as apocalypse or entropic decay, from the corrupt glitter of Hollywood to the ancient mysteries of mythic landscapes, from literary classics to hip hop. He convincingly shows how the study of arts, particularly literature, gives privileged access to the kaleidoscopic diversity of American society, opening up incomparable panoramas and fascinating insights. An indispensible aid to the scholar but also accessible to the general reader, these essays show how the study of America matters.
Notes: Collection of texts published previously.

19 English, 2 German contributions.

Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: "Westward the course of empire takes its way": the translatio-concept in popular American writing and painting; title: The American dream; title: Fett, sauber und versoffen: zu drei zeitlosen Konstanten des amerikanischen Deutschlandbildes; title: Americans in Europe; title: From the apocalyptic to the entropic end: from hope to despair to new hope?; title: From "entropy" to The crying of Lot 49: Thomas Pynchon and the entropic end; title: Invented religions as sense-making systems in Kurt Vonnegut's novels; title: Science and technology in Kurt Vonnegut's novels; title: Surviving the end: apocalypse, evolution, and entropy in Bernard Malamud, Kurt Vonnegut, and Thomas Pynchon; title: Die Story is tot, es lebe die Story : von der Short Story über die Anti-Story zur Meta-Story der Gegenwart; title: Doctorow's "Criminals of perception," or what has happened to the historical novel; title: Universality vs. ethnocentricity, or, the literary canon in a multicultural society; title: Teaching American multiculturalism through stories about "growing up ethnic"; title: Bret Easton Ellis: from Less than zero (1985) to Imperial bedroom (2010); title: Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, "Empire State of mind": a new anthem to New York City?; title: Coming of age in the shadow of the Vietnam War: Sam Hughes's quest in Bobbie Ann Mason's In country (1985); title: Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony (1977): universality versus ethnocentrism; title: Joe Leaphorn as a cultural mediator in Tony Hillerman's mysteries; title: Trouble in the house of fiction: Bernard Malamud's The tenants (1971); title: A medieval crusader in twentieth-century New Orleans: John Kennedy Toole's A confederacy of dunces (1980); title: T. Coraghessan Boyle's The tortilla curtain (1995): a case study in the genesis of Xenophobia.