American Novel to 1870
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 640
ISBN-13: 9780195385359
Subjects: American fiction, history and criticism, 19th century; Literature and society; American literature (collections), colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; National characteristics in literature
Description: The American Revolution and the Civil War bracket roughly eight decades of formative change in a republic created in 1776 by a gesture that was both rhetorical and performative. The subsequent construction of U.S. national identity influenced virtually all art forms, especially prose fiction, until internal conflict disrupted the project of nation-building. This volume reassesses, in an authoritative way, the principal forms and features of the emerging American novel.