The quest for a new indentity in urban life: The case of urban-villagers in the American novel

Abstract

Öz:This article aims to expose that under the ethics of modernity, Americans had a transmission through attributing a new identity of becoming urban-villagers which signifies a divided state of mind between the rural and the urban lifestyles. The dilemma of the modern man seems to manifest itself in the American mind from the beginning, in the shape of a desire and/or nostalgia for the rural yet a need for the urban. The concept of “urban-villager” will be evaluated in American literary context in respect to William Dean Howells’ The Rise of Silas Lapham, Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy in American literature.