The voice of the people: The short stories of O. Henry.
Item
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Title
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The voice of the people: The short stories of O. Henry.
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Identifier
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AAI9218226
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identifier
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9218226
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Creator
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Castellano, Joseph Philip.
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Contributor
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Adviser: William P. Kelly
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Date
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1992
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, American | American Studies
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Abstract
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Between 1895 and 1910, William Sydney Porter wrote some two hundred seventy-five short stories, most of which were published under his pen-name O. Henry. Although these stories were among the most widely-read fiction of the period, within a decade of the posthumous publication of O. Henry's last significant collection (1917), his reputation was already diminishing. The popularity of his work and its rapid decline involve important issues of culture, taste, meaning, and canonical status. Although his works have disappeared from the canon of American Literature, O. Henry's forgotten fiction provides ready access to the concerns, troubles, and psyches of Americans at the dawn of the twentieth century.;The potent cultural and political crises of that time--the closing of the frontier, anxiety over empire, the claustrophobia and alienation of the urban wilderness--frame O. Henry's popular short fiction. His narratives presented his audience with a way to embrace and engage the new "new world" they encountered everyday. Beneath the romance, irony, and sentimentality of O. Henry's fiction lies a world of lost identities, cultural and political confusion, economic anxiety, and personal disenchantment. The body of his work engages the contradictions that lie at the heart of the American experience.;O. Henry's popular fiction focuses on the three main privileged settings of the turn of the century: the diminishing Western frontier; Latin America and United States' expansion there; and the burgeoning urban reality of industrial capitalism. Amid the great diversity of the stories, O. Henry articulates the concerns and aspirations of the majority of Americans of the period--citizens who remained voiceless and invisible in the works of high culture. Finally ambivalent about the newly-emerging definition of America, O. Henry's short stories established the necessary categories in which to place an entirely new set of hard facts. His fiction encouraged an imagining of new possibilities and, like all popular forms, provides insight into an important cultural moment.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
