{"product_id":"strange-talk-gavin-jones-9780520214217","title":"Strange Talk: The Politics of Dialect Literature in Gilded Age America","description":"Late-nineteenth-century America was crazy about dialect: vernacular varieties of American English entertained mass audiences in \"local color\" stories, in realist novels, and in poems and plays. But dialect was also at the heart of anxious debates about the moral degeneration of urban life, the ethnic impact of foreign immigration, the black presence in white society, and the female influence on masculine authority. Celebrations of the rustic raciness in American vernacular were undercut by fears that dialect was a force of cultural dissolution with the power to contaminate the dominant language.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this volume, Gavin Jones explores the aesthetic politics of this neglected \"cult of the vernacular\" in little-known regionalists such as George Washington Cable, in the canonical work of Mark Twain, Henry James, Herman Melville, and Stephen Crane, and in the ethnic writing of Abraham Cahan and Paul Laurence Dunbar. He reveals the origins of a trend that deepened in subsequent literature: the use of minority dialect to formulate a political response to racial oppression, and to enrich diverse depictions of a multicultural nation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Gavin Jones\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0520214218\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780520214217\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of California Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/19\/1999\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 299\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.97lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.96h x 5.98w x 0.72d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e 04\/01\/2000","brand":"Gavin Jones","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44056206704895,"sku":"9780520214217","price":31.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_5bee4305-01f0-4899-8c1c-65cf06036732.jpg?v=1685040085","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/strange-talk-gavin-jones-9780520214217","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}