Power Search
Low Price Guarantee
We Take School POs
Nightmare Envy and Other Stories: American Culture and European Reconstruction
Contributor(s): Blaustein, George (Author)

View larger image

 ISBN: 0190209216     ISBN-13: 9780190209216
Publisher: Oxford Univ PR
OUR PRICE: $45.59  

Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions
Published: March 2018
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | American - Regional
- Literary Criticism | Modern - 20th Century
- History | Europe - Germany
Dewey: 943.000
LCCN: 2017002193
Physical Information: 0.7" H x 6.3" W x 9.2" L (0.97 lbs) 296 pages
Themes:
- Chronological Period - 20th Century
Features: Bibliography, Illustrated
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
What has it meant to be an Americanist? What did it mean to be an Americanist through fascism, war, and occupation? Nightmare Envy and Other Stories is a study of Americanist writing and institutions in the 20th century. Four chapters trace four routes through the mid-twentieth century. The
first chapter is the hidden history of American Studies in the United States, Europe and Japan. The second is the strange career of national character in anthropology. The third is a contest between military occupation and cultural diplomacy in Europe. The fourth is the emergence and fate of the
American Renaissance, as the scholar and literary critic F.O. Matthiessen carried a canon of radical literature across the Iron Curtain. Each chapter culminates in the postwar period, when the ruin of postwar Europe led writers and intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic to understand America
in new ways. Many of our modern myths of the United States and Europe were formed in this moment. Some saw the United States assume the mantle of cultural redeemer. Others saw a stereotypical America, rich in civilization but poor in culture, overtake a stereotypical Europe, rich in culture and
equally rich in disaster. Drawing on American and European archives, the book weaves cultural, intellectual, and diplomatic history, with portraits of Matthiessen, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, David Riesman, Alfred Kazin, and Ralph Ellison. It excavates the history of the Salzburg Seminar in
American Civilization, where displaced persons, former Nazis, budding Communists, and glad-handing Americans met on the common ground of American culture. Others found keys to their own contexts in American books, reading Moby-Dick in the ruins. Nightmare Envy and Other Stories chronicles American
encounters with European disaster, European encounters with American fiction, and the chasms over which culture had to reach.
 
Customer ReviewsSubmit your own review
 
To tell a friend about this book, you must Sign In First!