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This book examines fiction and ethnography as related forms for analysing and exhibiting social life. Focusing on the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and Edith Wharton, the study argues that novels and ethnographies collaborated to produce an unstable but powerful master discourse of 'culture', a discourse that allowed writers to turn new social energies and fears into particular kinds of authorial expertise. Crossing a range of institutions (anthropology, literature, museums, law) and texts (novels, ethnographies, travel books, social theory), this study allows fiction to take its place in a web of social practices that categorize, display and regulate what Wharton calls 'the customs of the country'.

Ethnologie dans la littérature --- Ethnology in literature --- Etnologie in de literatuur --- Gebruiken en gewoonten in de literatuur --- Manners and customs in literature --- Moeurs et coutumes dans la littérature --- American fiction --- Ethnology in literature. --- Literature and anthropology --- Literature and society --- Manners and customs in literature. --- History and criticism. --- History and criticism --- United States --- Wharton, Edith Newbold --- Knowledge --- Manners and customs --- Hawthorne, Nathaniel --- James, Henry --- Arts and Humanities --- Literature --- Anthropology and literature --- Anthropology --- Hawthorne, Nathaniel, --- Wharton, Edith, --- James, Henry, --- Dzheĭms, G. --- Dzheĭms, Genri, --- Jeimsŭ, Henri, --- Джеймс, Генри, --- ג׳יימס, הנרי, --- ג׳ײמס, הנרי, --- Τζειος, Χενρι, --- ‏جميس، هينري،‏ --- جيمز، هنرى --- Jones, Edith Newbold --- Olivieri, David, --- Wharton, Edith Newbold Jones, --- Уортон, Эдит, --- Gouorton, Intith, --- Gotorn, Nataniėlʹ --- Hotorn, Natanijel --- Huo-sang --- Huo-sang, Na-sa-ni-erh --- Hothorna, Netheniyala --- Готорн, Натаниэль --- האטארן, נאטאניעל, --- Huosang --- Huosang, Nasa'nier --- Nasa'nier Huosang --- 霍桑, --- 霍桑, 纳撒尼尔, --- 纳撒尼尔 霍桑, --- Hās̲ūran, Nātānīl --- Hās̲ūrn, Nātānīl --- هاثورن، ناتانيل --- Social life and customs.

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Late nineteenth-century America saw an explosion in mass culture-from sensationalist tabloid newspapers to amusement parks to Wild West shows. Historians and critics have traditionally observed the advent of mass culture as undermining literature's central role in the public sphere. Literary writers of the time either reacted with a public show of disdain or retreated to conduct their own private experiments in style and form. In Frantic Panoramas, Nancy Bentley questions these narratives of opposition.For literary writers, Bentley explains, the confrontation with mass culture was less a retreat than a transformation, an ordeal through which habits of contemplative appreciation could be refashioned into new forms of critical thought. By grappling with the energies that marked mass culture, authors came to recognize kinds of human experience that were only then becoming visible as public. William Dean Howells shaped the plots of his novels around tabloid events like rail and trolley accidents and the public chaos of apartment house fires. Although Henry James was distressed at the way dime fiction had changed the very definition of literature, his meditations on mass culture led him to reimagine the novel as a collective "workshop" in which authors and readers jointly discovered new meaning. Bentley offers close readings of these and other writers such as Edith Wharton, James Weldon Johnson, Pauline Hopkins, and Gertrude Bonnin to demonstrate how leading artists took inspiration from commercial culture to create new and distinct literary forms.Drawing on original archival research and a historically grounded theory of realism, Frantic Panoramas is an innovative and comprehensive study of how the emergence of mass culture affected literary culture in America.

Popular culture --- Popular culture in literature. --- Popular culture and literature --- Popular literature --- American literature --- Literature and popular culture --- Literature --- History --- History. --- History and criticism. --- Cultural Studies. --- Literature.

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