The Cambridge History of American Literature: Volume 2, Prose Writing 1820-1865Sacvan Bercovitch, Cyrus R. K. Patell Cambridge University Press, 1994 - 944 pages 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
Beginnings of Professionalism I I | 11 |
Womens Fiction and the Literary Marketplace in the 1850s | 74 |
Exploration and Empire | 127 |
The Frontier and American Indians | 175 |
The Literature of Slavery and African American Culture | 239 |
Unitarian Beginnings | 331 |
The Assault on Locke | 350 |
Carlyle and the Beginnings of American Transcendentalism | 362 |
The Hope of Reform | 459 |
Diaspora | 495 |
The Antislavery Years | 548 |
Establishing National Narrative | 607 |
Local Narratives | 629 |
Personal Narratives | 661 |
Literary Narrative | 693 |
Crisis of Literary Narrative and Consolidation | 735 |
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Common terms and phrases
African African American Alcott American Indians American literature antislavery appeared Bancroft become Benito Cereno Boston British Brook Farm Brownson California Carlyle century character Christian church Civil Concord Cooper criticism culture democratic divine Divinity School Address domestic Douglass Emerson England essay Euro-American fiction freedom frontier Fuller George Harvard Hawthorne Hawthorne's Henry hero human Irving James John journal labor land later lecture letter live magazine Margaret Fuller Melville Melville's Merrimack Rivers Mexican Mexico Moby-Dick moral national narrative Native American Natty Bumppo nature nonfiction North novel Parker Parkman poem poetry political popular published readers reform Revolution Ripley romance savage Scarlet Letter sense sentimental sketches slave slavery social society soul South southern spirit story Stowe Stowe's success territory Thoreau thought tion Transcendental Club Transcendentalists Uncle Tom's Cabin Union Unitarian United volume Walden West Whig William women writing wrote York