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

Joyce A. Rowe
Cambridge University Press, 2/18/1988
EAN 9780521335324, ISBN10: 0521335329

Hardcover, 172 pages, 21.6 x 14 x 1.4 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

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.