American Icon - Fitzgerald´s the Great Gatsby in Critical and Cultural Context 2011.pdf

Americ a n I con
itzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is widely seen as the quintessential
“great American novel,” and the extensive body of criticism on the
work bears out its significance in American letters. American Icon
traces its reception and its canonical status in American literature,
Fpopular culture, and educational experience. It begins by outlining the
novel’s critical reception from its publication in 1925, to very mixed
reviews, through Fitzgerald’s death, when it had been virtually forgotten.
Next, it examines the posthumous revival of Fitzgerald studies in the American Icon
1940s and its intensification by the New Critics in the 1950s, focusing Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in Critical and Cultural Context
on how and why the novel began to be considered a masterpiece
of American literature. It then traces the growth of the “industry” of
Gatsby criticism in the ensuing decades, stressing how critics of recent
decades have opened up study of the economic, sexual, racial, and
historical aspects of the text. The final section discusses the larger-than-
life status Gatsby has attained in American education and popular
culture, suggesting not only that it has risen from the critical ash heaps
into which it was initially discarded, but also that it has e part of
the fabric of American culture in a way that few other works have. in Critical and Cultural Context Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Robert Beuka is Professor of English at munity College,
City University of New York.
“Robert Beuka has constructed an immensely valuable resource for
teachers, students, and scholars. We have needed a book like this for a
long time; Gatsby criticism seems in little danger of exhaustion anytime
soon, and it es extremely difficult for readers anize extant
criticism simply because it’s so vast. This book will be read and reread,
annotated and underlined, for many years e.”

—Kirk Curnutt, Troy University Mo