Dangerous pilgrimages : transatlantic mythologies and the novel

Bradbury, Malcolm 1932-2000 (Author).

Summary: Since before Plato, the Old World has been inventing and refining its views and images of the New. And since explorers first called it into being, the New World has been looking back to the Old, borrowing its traditions to write new rules and distil truths that came to be self-evident. Within this cultural exchange between America and Europe, there has been what Malcolm Bradbury calls the "flourishing traffic in fancy, fantasy, dream and myth." And if there has always been a gap between image and reality, it has widened into rare entertainment - above all in the novel, a form that flourished as a result of the great transatlantic encounter.

Item details

ISBN: 0670866253 (alk. paper)
ISBN: 9780670866250 (alk. paper)
Physical Description: print
x, 514 p. ; 23 cm.
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher: New York : Viking, 1996.

Contents / Notes

General Note:

Includes index.

Formatted Contents Note:

The primeval fields of nature : Chateaubriand, Cooper and the transatlantic novel -- Storied associations : Washington Irving goes to Europe -- Blowing up the 'Merrikins : Charles Dickens and the regeneration of man -- The rogue and the detectives : Hawthorne, Melville and the European ruins -- The lighted stage : Twain, James and the European shrine -- Christmas at Brede : American realities, European romance -- Dentists at home : Gertrude Stein, D.H. Lawrence and the modern century -- A generation lost and found : Hemingway, Fitzgerald and the Paris of the Twenties -- Down and out in Paris and Mexico : Miller, Lowry and the low dishonest decade -- Life among the ruins : Wilson, Waugh and the great Pax Americana -- Frequent flyers : Transatlantic fictions today.