Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Reading and Power in the Nineteenth Century 2. The Pathway from Slavery to Freedom: Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass 3. The Passage to Middle-Class Respectability: Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick 4. The Road to Revolt: Emile Zola's Germinal 5. Women, Reading, and Power 6. The Demonic Underneath the Angelic Little Woman: Louisa May Alcott's Little Women 7. A Little Woman Gone Astray: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author

Ana-Isabel Aliaga-Buchenau received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Currently Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, she is working on a comparative study of ficitional representations of German immigration to Mexico and the United States.