The American Dream and the Popular NovelRoutledge, 23.10.2017 - 256 Seiten This title, originally published in 1985, examines conceptions of success and the good life expressed in bestselling novels – ranging from historical sagas and spy thrillers to more serious works by Updike, Bellows, Steinbeck and Mailer – published from 1945 to 1975. Using these popular books as cultural evidence, Elizabeth Long argues that the meaning of the American dream has changed dramatically, but in a more complex fashion than has been recognised by that country’s most prominent social critics. Her study presents a challenge to prevailing social-scientific views of contemporary American culture, and represents, both in theory and method, an important contribution to the study of culture and social criticism. |
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... characterize what differentiated post-World War II America from the more distant past. Both affluence and success - keystones of the American Dream - have been central categories in this discussion, and their meaning for both the nation ...
... characterized as ideological or stereotypic and dismissed accordingly. If they are, however, then surely they are an appropriate source for investigating widely held beliefs about the world and their relationship to social change.3 ...
... characterize emergent patterns of success. For example, at the beginning of the period, I refer to an 'entrepreneurial' conception of success that unites individual and social amelioration. Later, as the sense of limitless expansion ...
... characterized white-collar bureaucratic work as routinized and meaningless, encouraging skills of manipulation instead of open competition. Affluence offered leisure, but no relief from the pressures of conformity, in their analysis ...
... characterized contemporary cultural formations by implicit or explicit contrast with nineteenth-century ideologies ... characterize the present as a simple antithesis of what has been defined as 'the old.' This is particularly ...
Inhalt
from entrepreneurial adventure | |
the varieties of selffulfillment | |
the failure of success | |
The social critics | |
Conclusion | |
Notes | |
Bibliography | |
Index | |