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All Outputs (22)

Melville and Periodical Culture (2022)
Book Chapter
Thompson, G. (2022). Melville and Periodical Culture. In W. Kelley, & C. Ohge (Eds.), A New Companion to Herman Melville (261-271). Wiley

Routes into American Realism (2021)
Book Chapter
Thompson, G. (2021). Routes into American Realism. In Landscapes of Realism: Rethinking Literary Realism(s) in Global Comparative Perspective (213–230). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxii.07tho

Realism is usually associated with American literature written after the Civil War. This essay argues that realism was also a significant force during the late-eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. The argument proceeds in three parts. First, the... Read More about Routes into American Realism.

William Dean Howells's Periodical Time (2019)
Journal Article
Thompson, G. (2019). William Dean Howells's Periodical Time. Arizona Quarterly, 75(4), 77-106. https://doi.org/10.1353/arq.2019.0021

© 2019 by Arizona Board of Regents. This essay uses the example of William Dean Howells to redefine periodical time and suggest new ways in which extraliterary time manifests itself in literary form and content. Howells spent his early life typesetti... Read More about William Dean Howells's Periodical Time.

Realism and the Profession of Authorship (2019)
Book Chapter
Thompson, G. (2019). Realism and the Profession of Authorship. In K. Newlin (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism (301-320). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190642891.013.16

This chapter examines tensions between authorship and publishing in the era of American literary realism. The publishing industry changed with the emergence of literary agents, the growing financial significance of magazines and syndication, and the... Read More about Realism and the Profession of Authorship.

The “Plain facts” of fine paper in “The paradise of bachelors and the tartarus of maids” (2012)
Journal Article
Thompson, G. (2012). The “Plain facts” of fine paper in “The paradise of bachelors and the tartarus of maids”. American Literature, 84(3), https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-1664701

This essay intervenes in conversations about mid-nineteenth-century authorship and print culture by distinguishing between the economy of paper and the economy of print. He argues that critical treatments of Melville’s work, and particularly “The Par... Read More about The “Plain facts” of fine paper in “The paradise of bachelors and the tartarus of maids”.

“Frank Lloyd Oop”: microserfs, modern migration, and the architecture of the nineties (2011)
Journal Article
Thompson, G. (in press). “Frank Lloyd Oop”: microserfs, modern migration, and the architecture of the nineties. Canadian Review of American Studies, 31(3), https://doi.org/10.3138/CRAS-s031-03-02

If the early development of the computing industry in America was marked by a preoccupation with hardware, as companies like UNIVAC, DEC, and IBM filled the nation’s corporate and government offices with mainframes, then a similar pre­occupation has... Read More about “Frank Lloyd Oop”: microserfs, modern migration, and the architecture of the nineties.

Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine (2011)
Journal Article
Thompson, G. (2011). Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine. MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, 57(2), https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2011.0048

This essay examines how Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine shifts engagement with the details of the material world consistently onto the axis of temporality and how, in so doing, it fashions a theory of periodization in which historical and social tren... Read More about Periodizing the '80s: the 'differential of history' in Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine.