Master plots : race and the founding of an American literature, 1787-1845

著者

書誌事項

Master plots : race and the founding of an American literature, 1787-1845

Jared Gardner

Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, c1998

Johns Hopkins Paperbacks edition

  • : pbk

大学図書館所蔵 件 / 全6件

この図書・雑誌をさがす

注記

Includes bibliographical references (p. [215]-231) and index

内容説明・目次

内容説明

While it is well known that American writers of the early national period were preoccupied with differentiating their work from European models, Jared Gardner argues that the national literature of the United States was equally motivated by the desire to differentiate white Americans from blacks and Indians. Early American writers were drawn to fantasies of an "American race," and an American literature came to be defined not only by its desire for cultural uniqueness but also by its defense of racial purity. Gardner follows the shifts in American narrative's engagement with race, from Royall Tyler's Algerine Captive through the novels of Brockden Brown and Cooper, to Poe's tales and Douglass's autobiographies, narratives that differently sought to rewrite the intersections of racial and national identity the first generation had plotted. The larger story Master Plots describes is how the racial language of "slavery" and "savagery" helped nationalist writers plot a unique identity for the new nation and the cost this "master plot" exacted when the empty rhetoric of one generation confronted the historical facts of slavery and Native American Removal in the next. The question of what it meant to be an American had lost none of its severity and the desire for an answer none of its urgency. As early nationalist writers wrestled with the question, they proved how hard a question it is to answer and how great are the dangers in scripting its answers too easily.

目次

List of Illustrations Preface Chapter 1. The History of White Negroes Chapter 2. The Prodigal in Chains Chapter 3. Edgar Huntly's Savage Awakening Chapter 4. Cooper's Vanishing American Act Chapter 5. Poe's "Incredible Adventures and Discoveries Still Farther South" Chapter 6. Douglass and the Rewriting of American Race Notes Bibliography Index

「Nielsen BookData」 より

詳細情報

ページトップへ