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'.
| ISBN: | 9780521461900 |
| Publication date: | 31st March 1995 |
| Author: | Nancy Bentley |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 242 pages |
| Series: | Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers |
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'.
The Ethnography of Manners features in the following genres: Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers
The Ethnography of Manners is available in Hardback
The Ethnography of Manners was written by Nancy Bentley and published by Cambridge University Press
The Ethnography of Manners has 242 pages
Yes it is part of Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture series