The Cambridge history of American literature / general editor, Sacvan Bercovitch ; associate editor, Cyrus R.K. Patell.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bercovitch, Sacvan.

Patell, Cyrus R. K.

Class of 1932 Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

Physical Description:

volumes ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1994-

Summary:

The Cambridge History of American Literature addresses the broad spectrum of new and established directions in all branches of American writing and includes the work of scholars and critics who have shaped, and who continue to shape, what has become a major area of literary scholarship. The authors span three decades of achievement in American literary criticism, thereby speaking for the continuities as well as the disruptions sustained between generations of scholarship. Generously proportioned narratives allow at once for a broader vision and sweep of American literary history than has been possible previously, and while the voice of traditional criticism forms a background for these narratives, it joins forces with the diversity of interests that characterize contemporary literary studies.

The History offers wide-ranging, interdisciplinary accounts of American genres and periods. Generated partly by the recent unearthing of previously neglected texts, the expansion of material in American literature coincides with a dramatic increase in the number and variety of approaches to that material. The multifaceted scholarly and critical enterprise embodied in The Cambridge History of American Literature addresses these multiplicities - the social, the cultural, the intellectual, and the aesthetic - and demonstrates a richer concept of authority in literary studies than is found in earlier accounts.

This volume, concerned with works written between 1940 and the present, brings together two altogether different sets of materials and narrative forms: the aesthetic and the institutional. Robert von Hallberg traces the course of American poetry since World War II through close readings and aesthetic evaluations, portraying American poetic production as a cultural achievement - a process of aesthetic development connecting directly to developments in the society at large. Beginning with the legacy of the great modernist poets, von Hallberg progresses through the changing avantgarde of the Beats and the Black mountain poets to the poststructuralist Language Poets of New York and San Francisco. Offering a history of intellectual movements and debates of the same period, Evan Carton and Gerald Graff describe a parallel development, the growing profession of literary criticism, from the earliest roots of the New Criticism to the rise of deconstruction and poststructuralism, the emergence of feminist and minority critiques, and the spread of cultural and New Historicist studies. Common threads link the narratives: the academicization of poetry, the bridging of art and politics, and the expansion of what we consider "literary." Discarding the traditional synoptic overview of major figures, the authors settle in favour of a history recounted from within unfolding processes - a history of interstices and relations, equal to the task of considering contexts of art, power, and criticism in which it is set.

Contents:

v. 1. 1590-1820

v. 2. 1820-1865

v. 3. Prose writing 1860-1920

v.4. Nineteenth-century poetry 1800-1910

v.6. Prose writing 1910-1950

v. 7. Prose writing, 1940-1990

v.8. Poetry and criticism, 1940-1995

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Class of 1932 Fund.

ISBN:

052130105X

OCLC:

27222151