The Cambridge history of American literature. Volume 2, 1820-1865 / general editor, Sacvan Bercovitch ; associate editor, Cyrus R.K. Patell.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bercovitch, Sacvan, editor.

Patell, Cyrus R. K., editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Transcendentalism (New England).

United States--Literatures--History and criticism.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 887 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Other Title:

The Cambridge history of American literature. Volume 2, Prose Writing, 1820-1865

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Summary:

This is the fullest and richest account of the American Renaissance available in any literary history. The narratives in this volume made for a four-fold perspective on literature: social, cultural, intellectual and aesthetic. Michael D. Bell describes the social conditions of the literary vocation that shaped the growth of a professional literature in the United States. Eric Sundquist draws upon broad cultural patterns: his account of the writings of exploration, slavery, and the frontier is an interweaving of disparate voices, outlooks and traditions. Barbara L. Packer's sources come largely from intellectual history: the theological and philosophical controversies that prepared the way for transcendentalism. Jonathan Arac's categories are formalist: he sees the development of antebellum fiction as a dialectic of prose genres, the emergence of a literary mode out of the clash of national, local and personal forms. Together, these four narratives constitute a basic reassessment of American prose-writing between 1820 and 1865. It is an achievement that will remain authoritative for our time and that will set new directions for coming decades in American literary scholarship.

Contents:

CONDITIONS OF LITERARY VOCATION / Michael Davitt Bell

Beginnings of Professionalism

Women's Fiction and the Literary Marketplace in the 1850s

THE LITERATURE OF EXPANSION AND RACE / Eric J. Sundquist

Exploration and Empire

The Frontier and American Indians

The Literature of Slavery and African American Culture

THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS / Barbara L. Packer

Unitarian Beginnings

The Assault on Locke

Carlyle and the Beginnings of American Transcendentalism

Annus Mirabilis

The Establishment and the Movement

Letters and Social Aims

The Hope of Reform

Diaspora

The Antislavery Years

NARRATIVE FORMS / Jonathan Arac

Establishing National Narrative

Local Narratives

Personal Narratives

Literary Narrative

Crisis of Literary Narrative and Consolidation of National Narrative / Jonathan Arac

Chronology / Cyrus R.K. Patell.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 18 Nov 2015).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781139054706 (ebook)

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.