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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... social relationships and in a variety of institutional settings. In a sense, novels detail the many levels of ... thinkers like Clifford Geertz or Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann that the social world is not a simple reality, but a web ...
... thinkers lays claim to different territory. Riesman, for example, speaks of social character; Sennett, of the ... social developments in modern society. And, despite their differing terms and theoretical perspectives, all are coming to ...
... social contributions to the individually experienced malaise that ... thinkers have defined as the main drift on the institutional level. A ... social change - except when it is expressed in organized social movements - it is necessary to ...
... social critics do not have valuable insights to offer; or that popular ... thinkers to escape from the circle of their own convictions about the ... social construction rather than a reflector of structural events. Moreover, the diversity ...
... social critics' 'maps' of the same terrain as cultural artifacts, showing the ways in which the cultural developments recorded in popular novels permeate the work of these thinkers. The modern problem of meaning and values that each of ...
Inhalt
from entrepreneurial adventure | |
the varieties of selffulfillment | |
the failure of success | |
The social critics | |
Conclusion | |
Notes | |
Bibliography | |
Index | |