Writing Against Reform:
Aesthetic Realism in the Progressive Era
Throughout the Progressive Era, reform literature became a central feature of the American literary landscape. Works like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wall-Paper," and Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives topped bestseller lists and jolted middle-class readers into action.
While realism and social reform have a long-established relationship, prominent writers of the period such as Henry James, Edith Wharton, James Weldon Johnson, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Kate Chopin resisted explicit political rhetoric in their own works and critiqued reform aesthetics, which too often rang hollow. Examining the critique of reform aesthetics within the tradition of American realist literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Writing against Reform promises to change the way we think about the fiction of this period and many of America's leading writers.
SELECTED PRAISE:
“Writing against Reform will swiftly become required reading for scholars of American realism and of US literary studies more broadly. The book also offers exciting avenues of inquiry for students and scholars beyond these fields in the way it models a critical orientation to literature that goes beyond easy binary oppositions that see art as either “liberatory or oppressive” or “reflective of progressive or conservative ideologies” (20). Through her insightful and sustained close readings and careful attentiveness to the politics of history, Zibrak models how to make literature itself a resource for thinking.”
Laura Fisher, The Edith Wharton Review
“Nearly always incorporating an analysis of visual art alongside her appraisals of different literary realisms, Zibrak profoundly contributes to the field by compelling us to reevaluate our understanding of politics in turn-of-the-century fiction . . . the book teems with revelatory readings that should inform how we teach and study the authors it covers going forward.”
John Funchion, The Henry James Review
“Writing against Reform is an engagingly written and persuasively argued piece of scholarship that is a pleasure to read. This is the work of a scholar widely and comfortably knowledgeable in her field of study, and a model of how scholarship should be done: deeply researched, coherently reasoned, and always eloquent.”
María Carla Sánchez, author of Reforming the World: Social Activism and the Problem of Fiction in Nineteenth-Century America
“An engrossing and compelling study, Writing against Reform uses an impressive range of references and thorough understanding of publishing and social contexts to offer a convincing argument that is as satisfying as it is provocative.”
Keith Newlin, author of Hamlin Garland: A Life
'“Zibrak's ‘aesthetic realists’ opposed the co-optation of art forms by the new social sciences and disengagement from historical-cultural formalist traditions that gave art meaning beyond its own era. Their thoughtful considerations of social issues were subtler, with a view to broader historical circumstances rather than just specific contemporary events or legislation. A probing and convincing evaluation. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended.”
A. E. Krulikowski, Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries