Mardi, Moby-Dick, and Pierre share striking parallels in form and content: each is narrated by an introspective yet adventurous narrator who encounters various triggers for his development, including authorities, mysterious ...

I examine friendships between major characters in modernist novels written by four American writers: Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway. My examination will reveal that the friendships ...

Early Puritan colonists expressed conflicting views regarding the religious significance of the New World’s natural environment. On the one hand, it was “the Devil’s Territories” that God would transform into “a Mart” to ...

Women's hair at the turn of the twentieth century (1850s-1920s) can be read as a visual indicator of changing understandings of femininity during this time. As women began to explore the promise of greater female power ...

Cormac McCarthy's novels evoke a more complex perspective than many conventional descriptions—e.g., redemptive or nihilistic, modern or postmodern—allow. Focusing primarily on his Western novels, I demonstrate in contrast ...

Many people have never visited the American South, but everyone has "seen the movie." For nearly a century, American films have been the chief cultural arbiters of southern regional identity in the popular imagination. ...