American Writers in Europe 1850 to the Present [Paperback]

These essays explore the impartial critical outlook American writers acquired through their experiences in Europe since 1850. Collectively, contributors reveal how the American writer's intuitive sense of freedom, coupled with their feeling of liberation from European influences, led to intellectual independence in the literary works they produced.Foreword; Diane Johnson Introduction; Ferda Asya 1. The Search for Legitimacy in Nathaniel Parker Willis's Paul Fane; Udo Nattermann 2. God permits the tares to grow with the wheat : E.D.E.N. Southworth in Great Britain, 1859-1862; Ann Beebe 3. Gertrude Atherton's Europe: Portal or Looking Glass?; Windy Counsell Petrie 4. The London Making of a Modernist: John Cournos in Babel; Marilyn Schwinn Smith 5. Toward a Brighter Vision of American Ways and Their Meaning : Edith Wharton and the Americanization of Europe After the First World War; Jenny Glennon 6. American Writers in Paris Exploring the Unknown in Their Own Time: Edith Wharton's In Morocco and Diane Johnson's Lulu in Marrakech; Ferda Asya 7. Homeland strangeness : American Poets in Spain, 1936-1939; Robin Vogelzang 8. Fulbright Poems: Locating Europe and America in the Cold War; Diederik Oostdijk 9. Allen Ginsberg and the Beats in Literary Paris, or Apollinaire through the Door of Ginsberg's Mind; Richard Swope 10. Almost French: Food, Class, and Gender in the American Expatriate Memoir; Malin Lidstrom Brock

Professor Asya's interesting essay collection begins with American writers abroad in 1850 and comes close to the present time. A wide group of essay writers comments on not only the texts of works by E.D.E.N. Southworth, Gertrude Atherton, John Cournos, and Edith Wharton as well as poems by Ginsberg, Rich, Rukeyser, Rolfe, Ashbery and others; they also discuss the impetus for travel, the comfort levels of expatriates, and the quality of writing produced. This book provides a useful starting point for further discussions. - Linda Wagner-Martin, FranlSd