Twayne's Masterwork Studies by Claudia Johnson

Twayne's Masterwork Studies by Claudia Johnson

Tom Robinson, Mayella Ewell, Atticus and Scout Finch - these are the unforgettable characters that populate To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Harper Lee's haunting account of a mysterious recluse, a black man accused of raping a white woman, the courageous attorney who defends him, the attorney's son who is traumatized by the trial, and his six-year-old daughter, who narrates the story. An extraordinary indictment of racism in the American South during the 1930s, To Kill a Mockingbird has sold some 15 million copies, been translated into 10 languages, won a Pulitzer Prize in literature along with dozens of other honors, and been adapted into an Oscar-winning film and a timelessly popular stage play. And yet, for all the novel's distinctions - and, more important, relevance for contemporary readers - until now no book-length critical study has been devoted to it. Enter Claudia Durst Johnson's To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries, offering not only a corrective but a winningly lucid and enlightening analysis of this great American classic. Drawing on extensive research, Johnson furnishes readers with key insights into the novel's historical and biographical contexts, its place in American literature, and its critical reception. She then presents a five-part reading of Mockingbird, underscoring the novel's form and elucidating its pertinence for American society today. Special attention is paid to linking the novel's 1930s setting with the concomitant Scottsboro incident and connecting Mockingbird's writing in the 1950s with the concurrent events of the civil rights movement. An in-depth examination that pays tribute as it informs, To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries holdsstrong appeal for students, scholars, and general readers. Included in the volume are a Chronology, Notes, Selected Bibliography, and Index.

CLAUDIA DURST JOHNSON has recently retired as Professor of English at the University of Alabama, where she chaired the English Department for 12 years. She is the series editor of the Greenwood Press Literature in Context series, which includes her works Understanding Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1996), Understanding The Scarlet Letter (1995), and Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird (1994). She is also the author of To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries (1994), American Actress: Perspectives on the Nineteenth Century (1984), (with Vernon Johnson) Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century Theatre (Greenwood, 1982), The Productive Tension of Hawthorne's Art (1981), and (with Henry Jacobs) An Annotated Bibliography of Shakespearean Burlesques, Parodies, and Travesties (1976), as well as numerous articles on American literature and theatre.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780805780680
ISBN 10	0805780688
Title	Twayne's Masterwork Studies
Author	Claudia Johnson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Twayne Publishers
Year published	1994-04-13
Number of pages	144
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable