The Bestselling Novel: Currents in American History and Culture

Introduction

In her landmark book, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860, critic Jane Tompkins argues for an expansion of the category of "Literature" and a realignment of literary value. Popular and bestselling fiction works, often dismissed as "un-literary" and excluded from the literary canon, are instead -- in Tompkins' analysis -- valuable forms of literature. These texts serve as critical cultural indices:

In this view, novels and stories should be studied not because they manage to escape the limitations of their particular time and place, but because they offer powerful examples of the way a culture thinks about itself, articulating and proposing solutions for the problems that shape a particular historical moment (10, emphasis added).

Tompkins' reformulation of the value of literature--emphasizing and valuing the "cultural work" of popular fiction--provided the foundation of our advanced-level undergraduate course, "American Novel: Bestsellers from Early America to Today." We have examined the eighteenth-century seduction novel Charlotte Temple, the nineteenth-century sentimental novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and The House of Mirth, a novel of manners, as well as the contemporary genres of speculative fiction and the psychological thriller in Kindred and Gone Girl, respectively. (To read brief summaries of these texts, see the link at the bottom of this page.)

We have worked to discern the historical, social, and cultural contexts for the popularity of these works and to understand the bestselling novel as both a literary text and a commercial object. The paths (like chapters) in this book offer an occasion for reflecting on our discussions and an experiment in extending our thinking about the bestselling novels we have read.

Each path, written collaboratively by a group of three to four students, begins with an original argument on the "cultural work" of two paired texts, and then develops that argument through a series of individual pages that offer particular critical viewpoints and interventions. Each path functions independently and also intersects thematically with others. Begin by clicking on any path below or in the main menu in the upper left corner. As you navigate the paths, you will learn more about the historical conditions of these texts, the social concerns that animate them, and their contemporary echoes in media and culture.

“Bestselling” novels offer more than compelling plots or impressive sales; they offer key insights into the cultural currents shaping particular periods in American history. Further, these novels speak across time and place to readers and to each other, emphasizing that popular literature has always addressed questions of power, gender, race, identity, and social value.

This page has paths:

Contents of this path: