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Chapter 9 - Amid Forces: Theodore Dreiser’s Chicago

from Part II - Business Unusual: A New Urban American Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2021

Frederik Byrn Køhlert
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Summary

This chapter studies the historical “Chicago fictions” that Theodore Dreiser published between 1900 and 1915, showing how they chart the city’s growth and development between the Fire of 1871 and the turn of the twentieth century. The chapter also outlines some of the literary techniques that Dreiser used in his attempts at capturing the city's dynamism, focusing on his novels’ indeterminate sense of historicity, their generic and stylistic heterogeneity, their emphasis on unsettled and changeable characters, and their simultaneously backward and forward-facing perspectives.

Type
Chapter
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Chicago
A Literary History
, pp. 125 - 136
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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