Revisionary Interventions into the Americanist Canon

Published by Duke University Press 1994

Revisionary Interventions into the Americanist Canon

Edited by: Donald E. Pease
With contributions by: Michael Warner , John McWilliams and Wai Chee Dimock

In the series New Americanists

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822382645

Overview
Contents

About this book

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

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
New Americanists: Revisionist Interventions into the Canon Donald E. Pease Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
The Res Publica of Letters Michael Warner Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	38
The Desublimation of Romance
The Rationale for "The American Romance" John McWilliams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
Scarcity, Subjectivity, and Emerson Wai-chee Dimock Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
Hearing Narrative Voices in Melville's Pierre Priscilla Wald Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	100
The Rhetorical Use and Abuse of Fiction: Eating Books in Late Nineteenth-Century America Steven Mailloux Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
Maternal Discourse and the Romance of Self-Possession 1 Ivy Schweitzer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	158
The New Historicist Return of the Repressed Context
Realism, Ideology, and the Novel in America (18861896): Changing Perspectives in the Work of Mark Twain, W. D. Howells, and Henry James Robert Weimann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
American Literature and the New Historicism: The Example of Frederick Douglass Gregory S. Jay Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
"Ours by the Law of Nature": Romance and Independents on Mark Twain's River Howard Horwitz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Cataloging the Creatures of the Deep: "Billy Budd, Sailor" and the Rise of Sociology Susan Mizruchi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	272
Violence, Revolution, and the Cost of Freedom: John Brown and W. E. B. DuBois William E. Cain Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	331
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	333

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 351

eBook

Published: June 17, 1994
ISBN: 9780822382645