Title: The riven home
First published: 1997
Description: Antebellum culture celebrated the home as the site of nurture, affection, and equality; indeed, the middle-class home became the model of American institutions and values. Narratives from the American Renaissance, however, reveal that this was a conflicted, strained ideal. Stories from the culture represent intense social, political, and literary rivalry.

Thus, writers such as Cooper, Douglass, Stowe, Melville, and Southworth projected competing visions of "the American family," visions that challenged the claims of other writers. Building upon theories of Poe, Bakhtin, and Bloom, this study carefully traces the intertextual struggles over the nation's meaning.
Subjects: American Domestic fiction, American fiction, Domestic fiction, American, History, History and criticism, Home in literature, Intellectual life, Narration (Rhetoric)
Places: United States
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: PS377 .E35 1997