Revisionary Interventions into the Americanist CanonDonald E. Pease Duke University Press, 1994 M06 17 - 351 pages Throughout the era of the Cold War a consensus reigned as to what constituted the great works of American literature. Yet as scholars have increasingly shown, and as this volume unmistakably demonstrates, that consensus was built upon the repression of the voices and historical contexts of subordinated social groups as well as literary works themselves, works both outside and within the traditional canon. This book is an effort to recover those lost voices. Engaging New Historicist, neo-Marxist, poststructuralist, and other literary practices, this volume marks important shifts in the organizing principles and self-understanding of the field of American Studies. Originally published as a special issue of boundary 2, the essays gathered here discuss writers as diverse as Kate Chopin, Frederick Douglass, Emerson, Melville, W. D. Howells, Henry James, W. E. B. DuBois, and Mark Twain, plus the historical figure John Brown. Two major sections devoted to the theory of romance and to cultural-historical analyses emphasize the political perspective of "New Americanist" literary and cultural study. Contributors. William E. Cain, Wai-chee Dimock, Howard Horwitz, Gregory S. Jay, Steven Mailloux, John McWilliams, Susan Mizruchi, Donald E. Pease, Ivy Schweitzer, Priscilla Wald, Michael Warner, Robert Weimann |
Contents
1 | |
The Res Publica of Letters | 38 |
The Desublimation of Romance | 69 |
The Rationale for The American Romance | 71 |
Scarcity Subjectivity and Emerson | 83 |
Hearing Narrative Voices in Melvilles Pierre | 100 |
Eating Books in Late NineteenthCentury America | 133 |
Maternal Discourse and the Romance of SelfPossession in Kate Chopins The Awakening | 158 |
The New Historicist Return of the Repressed Context | 187 |
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abolitionism abolitionist aesthetic Alcott American Literature American Renaissance American Romance American Studies Americanists argue articulate assumptions authority Bad Boy Bercovitch Billy Budd Boston character Chase's Claggart claim consciousness consensus context Crews Crews's crisis critical critique cultural debate difference DuBois's economic Edna Edna's Emerson essay experience F. O. Matthiessen fact fiction Frederick Douglass freedom Hawthorne Henry James historicism Historicist human ideal ideology individual Isabel James John Brown labor language liberal imagination literary Little Women Mark Twain maternal Matthiessen Melville Melville's Mississippi moral mother narrative narrator nature nineteenth-century norms novelist pamphlet Pierre Pierre's piloting political principle print discourse public sphere reading realism realm relation represented rhetoric river scene seems sense slave slavery social society Sociology steamboat story symbolic theory tion tradition Trilling Trilling's University Press Vere Vere's W. E. B. DuBois William Dean Howells women writing York Zenger