The leisure ethic
Subtitle: work and play in American literature, 1840-1940
By: William A. Gleason.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 446
Subjects: American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Leisure -- United States -- History -- 19th century; American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Literature and society -- United States -- History; Leisure -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Recreation in literature; Leisure in literature; Work in literature; Play in literature
Description: At the Turn of the Last Century, as routinized industrial labor made a mockery of the gospel of work, Americans increasingly sought fulfillment not on the job but in their leisure activities. This book explores the multiple and, at times, contradictory tensions surrounding this turn to play and examines their impact on nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American literature.

Arguing that American writers participated in the ongoing debates over labor and leisure more strenuously than is commonly understood, the author shows how literary narratives both responded to and helped shape the emerging gospel of play.

Broad in scope and method, and structured by a series of original and illuminating pairings of texts and authorsincluding Thoreau and Mark Twain, Abraham Cahan and Ole Rolvaag, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Edna Ferber, James Weldon Johnson and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser and Richard Wright, and William Faulkner and Hurston - this book offers an important new direction for the study of labor, leisure, and representation.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 355-434) and index.