A Companion to American Fiction [electronic resource] : 1780 - 1865

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Samuels, Shirley.

Contributor:

Samuels, Shirley, Contributor.

Series:

Blackwell companions to literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--18th century--History and criticism.

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

American fiction.

American fiction--History and criticism--19th century--Handbooks, manuals, etc.

American fiction--History and criticism--18th century--Handbooks, manuals, etc.

Local Subjects:

American fiction--18th century--History and criticism.

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

American fiction.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (488 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Hoboken : Wiley, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This Companion presents the current state of criticism in the field of American fiction from the earliest declarations of nationhood to secession and civil war. Draws heavily on historical and cultural contexts in its consideration of American fiction Relates the fiction of the period to conflicts about territory and sovereignty and to issues of gender, race, ethnicity and identity Covers different forms of fiction, including children's literature, sketches, polemical pieces, historical romances, Gothic novels and novels of exploration Consid

Contents:

A COMPANION TO AMERICAN FICTION; Contents; List of Illustrations; Notes on Contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction; PART I Historical and Cultural Contexts; 1 National Narrative and the Problem of American Nationhood; 2 Fiction and Democracy; 3 Democratic Fictions; 4 Engendering American Fictions; 5 Race and Ethnicity; 6 Class; 7 Sexualities; 8 Religion; 9 Education and Polemic; 10 Marriage and Contract; 11 Transatlantic Ventures; 12 Other Languages, Other Americas; PART II Forms of Fiction; 13 Literary Histories; 14 Breeding and Reading: Chesterfieldian Civility in the Early Republic

15 The American Gothic16 Sensational Fiction; 17 Melodrama and American Fiction; 18 Delicate Boundaries: Passing and Other ''Crossings'' in Fictionalized Slave Narratives; 19 Doctors, Bodies, and Fiction; 20 Law and the American Novel; 21 Labor and Fiction; 22 Words for Children; 23 Dime Novels; 24 Reform and Antebellum Fiction; PART III Authors, Locations, Purposes; 25 The Problem of the City; 26 New Landscapes; 27 The Gothic Meets Sensation: Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, George Lippard, and E. D. E. N. Southworth

28 Retold Legends: Washington Irving, James Kirke Paulding, and John Pendleton Kennedy29 Captivity and Freedom: Ann Eliza Bleecker, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and Washington Irving's ''Rip Van Winkle''; 30 New England Tales: Catharine Sedgwick, Catherine Brown, and the Dislocations of Indian Land; 31 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Caroline Lee Hentz, Herman Melville, and American Racialist Exceptionalism; 32 Fictions of the South: Southern Portraits of Slavery; 33 The West; 34 The Old Southwest: Mike Fink, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson Jones Hooper, and George Washington Harris

35 James Fenimore Cooper and the Invention of the American Novel36 The Sea: Herman Melville and Moby-Dick; 37 National Narrative and National History; Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

OCLC:

437213904