What makes a literary classic? In " Sensational Designs" Jane Tompkins argues that it is not the intrinsic merit of a text, but rather the circumstances of its writing. Against the modernist belief that art, in order to be art, must be free from propaganda, Tompkins contends that writers like Brockden Brown, Cooper, Stowe, and Warner wrote in order to alter the face of the social world, not to elicit aesthetic appreciation.Thus, the value and significance of the novels, for readers of their time, depended on precisely those characteristics that formalist criticism has taught us to deplore: stereotyped characters, sensational plots, and cliched language.
Industry Reviews
"One of the important works of the year....Contains some of the best arguments I know on the conventionality of canon formation."--Michael J. Hoffman, American Literary Scholarship
"Wide-ranging, clearly written, cogently argued.... One of those stimulating and significant seminal studies sure to be frequently cited."--Choice.
"A major reassessment of nineteenth-century 'sentimental' novels...Force[s] us to reconsider on every page our usual notions of literary valuation, interpretive bias, and canon formation."--Western Humanities Review
"Sensational Designs...is an eye-opener for those too much obsessed by their own academic and cultural investments to understand the true stylistic and ideological complexity of nineteenth-century American fiction."--Philip F. Gura, Esquire
"A cogently argued redefinition of the entire process of literary study."--Women's Review of Books
"One of the important works of the year....Contains some of the best arguments I know on the conventionality of canon formation."--Michael J. Hoffman, American Literary Scholarship
"Wide-ranging, clearly written, cogently argued.... One of those stimulating and significant seminal studies sure to be frequently cited."--Choice.
"A major reassessment of nineteenth-century 'sentimental' novels...Force[s] us to reconsider on every page our usual notions of literary valuation, interpretive bias, and canon formation."--Western Humanities Review
"Sensational Designs...is an eye-opener for those too much obsessed by their own academic and cultural investments to understand the true stylistic and ideological complexity of nineteenth-century American fiction."--Philip F. Gura, Esquire
"A cogently argued redefinition of the entire process of literary study."--Women's Review of Books
"Tompkins has added a powerful voice for a new kind of literary history...[she] raises important questions in an informative and wonderfully provocative manner."--Studies in the Novel
"[Tompkins's] reading of 'sensational' texts in light of her own new strategies is nothing less than brilliant."--Legacy
"Tompkins' study demonstrates the value of the contextual approach."--Centennial Review
"Her work cannot help but encourage a healthy reexamination of the presumptions we bring to...literature."--South Central Review
"Controversial...extremely provocative...intellectually challenging yet accessible."--American Quarterly
"An important contribution to the study of literature written by American women."--Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature
"In this lively and engaging book, Jane Tompkins addresses theoretical questions of importance to all readers of American literature while presenting a series of provocative essays on individual works of fiction by Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Susan Warner."--Early American Literature
"One of the few original studies of American literature to appear in the last twenty years. Tompkins' clear and committed style should insure that she will be understood and vigorously debated."--Frank Lentricchia, Duke University
"The place to start in any investigation of the way in which rhetoric shapes and creates culture: novels we thought we knew emerge as different texts as she teaches us how to read them afresh."--Signs
