Goldsmith, Arnold. The Contemporary American Urban Novel. Wayne State UP, 1991.
Goldsmith examines various American novelists and the way these novelists present the American society. Goldsmith notes that these novelists have presented the conflicts that faced people as they encountered new ways. This book makes the reader understand the concerns that are raised in American literature.
Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
Gray gives the history of the literature of America, and he highlights the conflicts featured in this literature. A lot of American literature, according to Gray, arose form the cultural conflicts that Americans faced. Thus, cultural conflict is the root of most American literature. This theme is presented in the poetry of Whitman, Poe and many American authors.
Lee, Harry. Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories. Metro Books, 2008.
Harry introduces the concerns of Poe’s literature, and he shows that Poe deals with the conflicts in the American society. The American society is made up of people from different cultures, and there are lots of cultural conflicts. However, Poe suggests that formation of an American culture will solve this problem.
Passos, John. Manhattan Transfer. Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003.
This novel is an expressionistic image of New York in the 1920s, and it reveals the lives of rich, power brokers and poor immigrants. Dos Passos records the lives of characters who are struggling to be a part of modernity before modernity destroys them.
This novel gives the story of people who are struggling to fit in the new American society. People face a lot of challenges in this society. The novel also reflects themes of nationhood present in Whitman’s poetry.
Reynolds, David. Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography. Vintage Books, 1995.
This book is indispensable in studying Whitman’s work. It gives themes that are recurrent in Whitman’s work and explains their relevance to American people. The conflicts presented in this book are relevant in understanding the conflicts that faced America during cultural integration.
Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence. Forgotten Books, 1948.
This is the primary text from which this essay will be constructed. The book gives the raw material for the future paper. There is a conflict in this book, and people are getting in to foreign ways. People respect the American Society of the time, and the family is very important. However, some new ways are starting to have influence, and the society is changing.
Works Cited
Goldsmith, Arnold. The Contemporary American Urban Novel. Wayne State UP, 1991.
Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
Lee, Harry. Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories. Metro Books, 2008.
Passos, John. Manhattan Transfer. Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003.
Reynolds, David. Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography. Vintage Books, 1995.
Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence. Forgotten Books, 1948.