Background
Bell, Michael Davitt was born on March 30, 1941 in Pittsburgh. Son of Davitt Stranahan and Marian Bell.
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book
The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea
( Ever since William Dean Howells declared his "realism w...)
Ever since William Dean Howells declared his "realism war" in the 1880s, literary historians have regarded the rise of realism and naturalism as the signal development in post-Civil War American fiction. Questioning this generalization, Michael Davitt Bell investigates the role that these terms played in the social and literary discourse of the 1880s and 1890s. He argues that "realism" and "naturalism" were ideological categories used to promote a version of "reality" based on radically anti-"literary" and heavily gendered assumptions. In chapters on William Dean Howells, Frank Norris, Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Sarah Orne Jewett, Bell examines the effects that ideas about realism and naturalism had on writers. He demonstrates that, for many of them, claiming to be a realist or a naturalist was a way to provide assurance that one was a "real" man rather than an "effeminate" artist.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226042022/?tag=2022091-20
Development of American Romance: The Sacrifice of Relation
(THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN ROMANCE, THE SACRIFICE OF REL...)
THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN ROMANCE, THE SACRIFICE OF RELATION, MICHAEL DAVITT BELL, 1980 EDITION
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226042111/?tag=2022091-20
Michael Davitt Bell
Edit ProfileHistory and literature educator
Education
Bachelor of Arts, Yale University, 1963; Master of Arts, Harvard University, 1968; Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1969.
Career
Instructor, Princeton University, New Jersey, 1968-1969; assistant Professor of English, Princeton University, 1969-1975; associate professor, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1975-1979; professor, Williams College, 1979-1981; J. Leland Miller professor American history, literature and eloquence, Williams College, since 1981.
Achievements
Works
book
-
The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea
( Ever since William Dean Howells declared his "realism w...)
-
Development of American Romance: The Sacrifice of Relation
(THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN ROMANCE, THE SACRIFICE OF REL...)
-
The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea
Connections
Married Claudia Swett, 1967 (divorced 1975). Children— Sophia, Cathleen.
