Equivocal Endings in Classic American Novels
The Scarlet Letter; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Ambassadors; The Great Gatsby

An original approach to four mainstream texts for the study of American literature and the novel in general.

Joyce A. Rowe (Author)

9780521061025, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 24 April 2008

172 pages
21.7 x 13.9 x 1.1 cm, 0.23 kg

An original approach to four mainstream texts for the study of American literature and the novel in general. It examines the strangely equivocal nature of the vision with which each of them ends, with the central protagonists illogically clinging to their own transcendent image of selfhood.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Nathaniel Hawthorne: 'My Kinsman, Major Molineux': the several voices of independence
2. Bleak dreams: restriction and aspiration in The Scarlet Letter
3. Mark Twain's great evasion: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
4. Strether unbounded: the selective vision of Henry James's Ambassador
5. Closing the circle: The Great Gatsby
Conclusion: Moby-Dick and our problem with history
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]