Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 1993.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [267]-275) and index.

Pt. 1. Realist and Naturalist Discourses of the Urban World. 1. From the Natural to the Urban Sublime. 2. Critical Reassessments of American Realism and Naturalism. 3. The Limits of Urban Realism: William Dean Howells's A Hazard of New Fortunes. 4. Sublime Horizons, Vitalist Mysteries: Theodore Dreiser's Naturalist Metropolis. 5. Domus versus Megalopolis: Local and Global Epistemologies of the City -- Pt. 2. Mysteries of Production and Exchange. 6. The Discovery of the Urban Market: Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie. 7. Sublime (Re)production: Frank Norris's The Octopus and The Pit. 8. Pastoralism Reconstructed: Jack London's The Valley of the Moon -- Pt. 3. The Sociology of the Naturalist Sublime. 9. The "Common Lot" of 1890s and 1900s Realism: Middle-Class Responses to the Metropolis. 10. Naturalist Gothic: Population Economics and Urban Genealogies. 11. The Politics of Hypnotic Persuasion -- Pt. 4. Novels of Artistic Education. 12. Overcivilization and the Crisis of Writerly Manhood. 13. Naturalist Gothic and the Regeneration of Artistic Identity. 14. On the Threshold of the Metropolis: The Construction of Naturalist Bohemia.