John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.
A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's goals and methods. Although the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists.
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net (1954), was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Her 1978 novel The Sea, The Sea won the Booker Prize. In 1987, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Henry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
The word decadence refers to a late 19th century movement emphasizing the need for sensationalism, egocentricity; bizarre, artificial, perverse, and exotic sensations and experiences. By extension, it may refer to a decline in art, literature, science, technology, and work ethics, or to self-indulgent behavior.
American literature is literature written or produced in the United States and in the colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also includes literature produced in languages other than English.
The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is a work of historical fiction by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850. Set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with a man to whom she is not married and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. As punishment, she must wear a scarlet letter 'A'. Containing a number of religious and historic allusions, the book explores themes of legalism, sin and guilt.
Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis was an English literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at Downing College, Cambridge, and later at the University of York.
The American Renaissance period in American literature ran from about 1830 to around the Civil War. A central term in American studies, the American Renaissance was for a while considered synonymous with American Romanticism and was closely associated with Transcendentalism.
Fredrick Newton Arvin was an American literary critic and academic. He achieved national recognition for his studies of individual nineteenth-century American authors.
Harry Tuchman Levin was an American literary critic and scholar of both modernism and comparative literature.
Hester Prynne is the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter. She is portrayed as a woman condemned by her Puritan neighbors for having a child out of wedlock. The character has been called "among the first and most important female protagonists in American literature".
The House of the Seven Gables: A Romance is a Gothic novel written beginning in mid-1850 by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne and published in April 1851 by Ticknor and Fields of Boston. The novel follows a New England family and their ancestral home. In the book, Hawthorne explores themes of guilt, retribution, and atonement, and colors the tale with suggestions of the supernatural and witchcraft. The setting for the book was inspired by the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion, a gabled house in Salem, Massachusetts, belonging to Hawthorne's cousin Susanna Ingersoll, as well as ancestors of Hawthorne who had played a part in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The book was well received upon publication and later had a strong influence on the work of H. P. Lovecraft. The House of the Seven Gables has been adapted several times to film and television.
Frederick Campbell Crews is an American essayist and literary critic. Professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, Crews is the author of numerous books, including The Tragedy of Manners: Moral Drama in the Later Novels of Henry James (1957), E. M. Forster: The Perils of Humanism (1962), and The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes (1966), a discussion of the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He received popular attention for The Pooh Perplex (1963), a book of satirical essays parodying contemporary casebooks. Initially a proponent of psychoanalytic literary criticism, Crews later rejected psychoanalysis, becoming a critic of Sigmund Freud and his scientific and ethical standards. Crews was a prominent participant in the "Freud wars" of the 1980s and 1990s, a debate over the reputation, scholarship, and impact on the 20th century of Freud, who founded psychoanalysis. In 2017, he published Freud: The Making of an Illusion.
In Defense of Reason is a three-volume work of literary criticisms by the American poet and literary critic Yvor Winters. First published in 1947, the book is known for its meticulous study of metrical verse and for its examples of Winters' system of ethical criticism.
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to support themselves in this way or write as an avocation. Most novelists struggle to have their debut novel published, but once published they often continue to be published, although very few become literary celebrities, thus gaining prestige or a considerable income from their work.
Michael Joseph Colacurcio is a distinguished professor of English at UCLA. He specializes in American literature and literary history.
The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (1950) is a collection of sixteen essays by American literary critic Lionel Trilling, published by Viking in 1950. The book was edited by Pascal Covici, who had worked with Trilling when he edited and introduced Viking's Portable Matthew Arnold in 1949. With the exception of the preface, which was written specifically for the publication of the book, all the essays included in The Liberal Imagination were individually published in the decade before the book's publication in literary and critical journals, such as The Partisan Review, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, and The American Quarterly. The essays represent Trilling's written work and critical thoughts of the 1940s.
Romance, is a "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents". This genre contrasted with the main tradition of the novel, which realistically depict life. These works frequently, but not exclusively, take the form of the historical novel. Walter Scott describes romance as a "kindred term", and many European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo".
