Dislocating race and nation
Subtitle: episodes in nineteenth-century American literary nationalism
By: Robert S. Levine.
Contributors: Levine, Robert S. 1953-
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press; The University of North Carolina Press; Brand: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Chapel Hill
Language: eng
Number of pages: 322
ISBN-13: 9780807832264; 9780807859032
Subjects: American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; National characteristics, American, in literature; Literature and history -- United States -- History; Nationalism and literature -- United States -- History; American literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; Literature and society -- History; Race relations in literature; Black nationalism in literature
Description: American literary nationalism is traditionally understood as a cohesive literary tradition developed in the newly independent United States that emphasized the unique features of America and consciously differentiated American literature from British literature. Robert S. Levine challenges this assessment by exploring the conflicted, multiracial, and contingent dimensions present in the works of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American and African American writers. Conflict and uncertainty, not consensus, Levine argues, helped define American literary nationalism during this period.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Undoings; title: Charles Brockden Brown, Louisiana, and the contingencies of empire; title: Circulating the nation: David Walker, the Missouri Compromise, and the appeals of black literary nationalism; title: Genealogical fictions: Melville and Hannah crafts in Hawthorne's house; title: Frederick Douglass's hemispheric nationalism, 1857-1893; title: Undoings redux.