Emergent U.S. literatures : from multiculturalism to cosmopolitanism in the late-twentieth-century / Cyrus Patell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Patell, Cyrus R. K., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Minority authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Multiculturalism in literature.

Cosmopolitanism in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (296 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York ; London, [England] : New York University Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Emergent U.S. Literatures introduces readers to the foundational writers and texts produced by four literary traditions associated with late-twentieth-century US multiculturalism. Examining writing by Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and gay and lesbian Americans after 1968, Cyrus R. K. Patell compares and historicizes what might be characterized as the minority literatures within “U.S. minority literature.” Drawing on recent theories of cosmopolitanism, Patell presents methods for mapping the overlapping concerns of the texts and authors of these literatures during the late twentieth century. He discusses the ways in which literary marginalization and cultural hybridity combine to create the grounds for literature that is truly “emergent” in Raymond Williams’s sense of the term—literature that produces “new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationships” in tension with the dominant, mainstream culture of the United States. By enabling us to see the American literary canon through the prism of hybrid identities and cultures, these texts require us to reevaluate what it means to write (and read) in the American grain. Emergent U.S. Literatures gives readers a sense of how these foundational texts work as aesthetic objects—rather than merely as sociological documents—crafted in dialogue with the canonical tradition of so-called “American Literature,” as it existed in the late twentieth century, as well as in dialogue with each other.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Theorizing the emergent

1. From marginal to emergent

2. Nineteenth-century roots

3. The politics of early twentieth-century u.s. literary history

4. Liberation movements

5. Multiculturalism and beyond

Conclusion: emergent literatures and cosmopolitan conversation

Notes

Index

About the author

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [241]-270) and index.

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781479804498

1479804495

9781479879502

1479879509

OCLC:

893439499