| HB-263082-19 | Research Programs: Awards for Faculty | Nathaniel Enon Cadle | American Literature, the Romantic Revival, and the Rise of Modernism | 7/1/2019 - 6/30/2020 | $60,000.00 | Nathaniel | Enon | Cadle | | | | Florida International University Board of Trustees | Miami | FL | 33199-2516 | USA | 2018 | American Literature | Awards for Faculty | Research Programs | 60000 | 0 | 60000 | 0 | Preparation
for publication of a book about the relationship between U.S. literary
modernism and the Romantic Revival (c. 1880-1920), with consideration of works
by Edith Wharton, Henry James, and W.E.B. Du Bois.
At the end of the nineteenth century, an unexpected resurgence of widespread interest in supposedly old-fashioned romantic fiction occurred. Historical, sensational, sentimental, and utopian romances suddenly displaced realistic novels in popular magazines and on bestseller lists. Critics have long dismissed this “Romantic Revival,” yet several important authors, including Edith Wharton, Henry James, and W.E.B. Du Bois, embraced it, using the distant settings and fantastic plots of these various genres in innovative ways. My project surveys the Romantic Revival as an important literary movement that enabled particularly skillful writers to push the boundaries of their fiction and move beyond the empiricism of Realism into the uncertainties of Modernism. In short, I argue that the Romantic Revival played a significant role in the emergence of Modernism in the United States. |