Sign-In
Cart
Literature of Extreme Poverty in the Great Depression
Hardcover
Literary CriticismGeneral Reference
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN10: 0197785069
ISBN13: 9780197785065
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Jan 31 2025
Pages: 260
Weight: 1.11
Height: 1.06 Width: 6.46 Depth: 9.34
Language: English
ISBN13: 9780197785065
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Jan 31 2025
Pages: 260
Weight: 1.11
Height: 1.06 Width: 6.46 Depth: 9.34
Language: English
The Literature of Extreme Poverty in the Great Depression uncovers a forgotten side of modernism: the literature of unemployment and poverty in the 1930s, particularly fiction and poetry about people starving on the street or struggling on welfare, people who often don't know where they'll find their next meal or whether they'll find someplace to sleep. They spend the night on park benches or in filthy flophouses, or they trade sex for food and shelter, or they starve. Time itself changes. For the starving poor standing for hours and hours in a breadline, the speed of modern culture slows down.
Parker expands on previous studies of the 1930s by recovering the fiction and poetry of dozens of forgotten writers and reading them together with political cartoons and with underknown writing by such acclaimed or understudied writers as Langston Hughes, Tom Kromer, Dorothy West, and Martha Gellhorn. From an age so immersed in despair and suffering that many writers came to doubt the very idea of literary aesthetics, this book rescues a vast archive of literary analogues to the famous documentary photographs that burned the Depression into American visual memory. It shapes a collective portrait and interpretation of a nearly lost literary history that represents a nation, its crisis, and its literature of crisis from the bottom up rather than from the top down.
Also in
Literary Criticism
An Empire of Air and Water: Uncolonizable Space in the British Imagination, 175-185
Carroll, Siobhan
Hardcover
$118.80
Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times
Sachs, Aaron
Hardcover
$67.50
Queer Faith: Reading Promiscuity and Race in the Secular Love Tradition
Sanchez, Melissa E.
Paperback
$56.55
Ancient Rome at the Cinema: Story and Spectacle in Hollywood and Rome
Theodorakopoulos, Elena
Paperback
$88.49
How to Be a Cat: (Cat Books for Kids, Cat Gifts for Kids, Cat Picture Book)
Lazar, Ralph
Swerling, Lisa
Hardcover
$4.99
Hidden Hemingway: Inside the Ernest Hemingway Archives of Oak Park
Cirino, Mark
Elder
Vetch, Aaron
Hardcover
$37.95
Script Analysis for Theatre: Tools for Interpretation, Collaboration and Production
Knopf, Robert
Paperback
$71.93
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Pitavy, Francois
Alighieri, Dante
Paperback
$33.00
How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines (Large Print Edition)
Foster, Thomas C.
Paperback
$23.74
Much ADO about Nothing: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English
Shakespeare, William
Sparknotes
Paperback
From $4.99
Twelfth Night: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English
Sparknotes
Shakespeare, William
Paperback
From $4.99
Penelope's Bones: A New History of Homer's World Through the Women Written Out of It
Hauser, Emily
Paperback
$19.00
Romeo and Juliet: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English
Sparknotes
Shakespeare, William
Paperback
From $4.99
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
Saunders, George
Paperback
$18.90
Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise
Rundell, Katherine
Hardcover
$16.19
Mythology (75th Anniversary Illustrated Edition): Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
Hamilton, Edith
Hardcover
From $12.99
The Language of the Night: Essays on Writing, Science Fiction, and Fantasy
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Paperback
$17.09
But Have You Read the Book? Romance Edition: 40 Love Stories That Inspired Our Favorite Films
Lopez, Kristen
Hardcover
$19.00
Mean Dads for a Better America: The Generous Rewards of an Old-Fashioned Childhood
Shillue, Tom
Paperback
$15.19
Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe
Ogden, Emily
Hardcover
$28.50
Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend
Romney, Rebecca
Paperback
$19.95
Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance: The Forgotten Founding Mothers of the Fairy Tale and the Stories That They Spun
Harrington, Jane
Hardcover
$28.50
A Midsummer Night's Dream: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English
Sparknotes
Shakespeare, William
Paperback
From $4.99
Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear: A. A. Milne and the Creation of Winnie-The-Pooh
Brandreth, Gyles
Hardcover
$29.70
Julius Caesar: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English
Shakespeare, William
Sparknotes
Paperback
From $4.99
The Odyssey: An Illustrated Guide: A Character-By-Character Guide to the Story of Odysseus
Metzger, Doug
Hardcover
$17.10
As You Like It: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English
Sparknotes
Shakespeare, William
Paperback
From $4.99
Cicero's Tongue: The Life of Rome's Greatest Orator and the End of the Republic
Edwards, Catharine
Hardcover
$31.35
The Jane Austen Insult Guide for Well-Bred Women: Serving Tea with a Side of Scorn
Reed, Emily
Hardcover
$14.25
The New Lifetime Reading Plan: The Classical Guide to World Literature, Revised and Expanded
Fadiman, Clifton
Major, John S.
Paperback
$18.99
The Greek Tragedies: Seventeen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
Aeschylus
Sophocles
Euripides
Paperback
$23.75
The Art and Craft of Stephen King: The Story Behind Every Novel, Novella, and Short Story
Astic, Guy
LaFond, Frank
Hardcover
$57.00
The Dream Factory: London's First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare
Swift, Daniel
Hardcover
$28.50