The Hard Work Behind the Cultural Work of American Fiction

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Jane Tompkins wants to get rid of the stereotyped or the superior notion that novels often have, and focus more on the cultural aim of the work. She concedes that even texts already in the canon “assume a quite different shape and significance when considered in the light of the cultural work they were designed to do” (xv). Whereas Tompkins provides Charles Brown`s novels as an example that prove her claim, I still believe that it is somehow difficult for the less experienced fiction reader to identify the real cultural work behind the novel. In order to acknowledge the cultural work a novel or a story reached, it is necessary to analyze what inspired that cultural aim, who was the target audience and if it did make a change what did it consist of. To gain this kind of information depends not only in understanding the authors point of view or the novel`s goal, but also having knowledge of what influence the author based on his or her historical context and really understand the cultural circumstances at a certain time.

Although Tompkins may be right about literature being dependent on modern critics and interests of particular times, she still needs to make her argument more convincing. In her overall work, Jane Tompkins puts in question whether the texts that have made the canon are there because of the right motives and also questions our way of interpreting American literature by inviting us to analyze literature works by this alternative way. Though I concede that Tompkins proposition makes sense and does in fact provide better results compared to modern critics standards, I still insist that she faces herself with quite a challenge to make her argument plausible for all of the American fiction readers, especially the contemporary literature audience.

Cited Work

Tompkins, Jane P. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. Print.