ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Historical Contexts and Literature: An Annotated Bibliography



Historical Contexts and Literature: An Annotated Bibliography

Boone, Joseph Allen. "Delving and Diving for Truth: Breaking through to Bottom in Thoreau's WaidenT ESQ: A Jour, of the American Renaissance, 27 (3rd Quarter 1981), 135-46.

Thoreau uses a pattern of imagery suggesting breaking through surfaces in order to near the greater reality beneath. He reverses the ascendant movement generally associated with Transcendentalism by stressing that the searcher must dig, delve, mine, and burrow toward truth. The earth becomes a metaphor for material reality through which truth seekers must break, and water serves as a marker dividing perceived reality from that which may be gained by penetrating the surface of things.

Collison, Robert L. Bibliographies, Subject and National: A Guide to Their Contents, Arrangement and Use. 3d ed., Rev. and enl. New York: Hafner, London, Lockwood, 1968

 This highly selective, informal, annotated guide to about 500 bibliographies is divided into two parts. The first, Subject Bibliography, is further divided into ten headings covering authorship, book production, publishing, and bookselling; librarianship and encyclopedias; philosophy, psychology and sports. The second part is devoted to universal bibliographies, bibliography of bibliographies, and serial publications. Within each section is a discursive informal essay. An index of names and subjects is included and is especially valuable.

 

 

Hill, Hamlin. "There Ought to Be Clowns': American Humor and Literary Naturalism/' Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, 5 (1980), 413-22.

There is a long tradition of American humor which exploits man's bestiality. Though this humor began to wear thin with naturalism—with its coarse and revolting subject matter, its objective distancing, and its pessimistic determinism—it is nonetheless still visible. Field and Harry Graham wrote comic depictions of child abuse betraying an indifference to pain and suffering, amorality, and unconcern for the value of life. W. C. Brann ...