Naslov
American Naturalism Revisited : A Bakhtinian Reading of Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie

Autori
Runtić, Sanja

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Poglavlja u knjigama, znanstveni

Knjiga
Teaching English for life : studies to honor prof. Elvira Petrović on the occasion of her seventieth birthday

Urednik/ci
Kučanda, Dubravko ; Brdar, Mario ; Berić, Boris

Grad
Osijek

Godina
2004

Raspon stranica
435-455

ISBN
953-6456-48-6

Ključne riječi
Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, postmodernism, heteroglossia, consumer culture, feminist criticism

Sažetak
Because of its polyphonic character, Dreiser's first novel Sister Carrie furnishes multiple interpretive possibilities, some of which invite postmodern reading. Heteroglossia is in the novel observable at two textual levels – the generic and socio-ideological one through numerous intrusions of the languages of the growing consumer culture into conventional naturalistic and sentimental plot designs. Such a combination of languages is interesting from both cultural and feminist perspectives. Describing the beginnings of the commodification process that reached America at the end of the nineteenth-century, Dreiser detected the beginnings of what today's cultural critics call "the loss of the real" and anticipated the consumer appetite as a new domineering force on the horizon of social determinants. By signalling a contradiction between traditional languages of the self and the emerging cultural voices, Dreiser at the same time announced the transformation of women's social position and came out with a definition of the modern self. Although he remained true to many elements of traditional poetics, it is precisely such a hierarchy of languages in the novel that failed the late-nineteenth-century horizon of expectations. Yet, at the same time these polyphonic echoes have proved to be the very textual flavor that suits the taste of contemporary reception.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

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