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The Cambridge History of American Literature Vol. 2: Prose Writing, 1820–1865

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Prose Writing, 1820–1865

Series The Cambridge History of American Literature, Volume 2

Edited by Sacvan Bercovitch and Cyrus R. K. Patell

Publication Date 1995

Hardback ISBN-10
0521301068

Hardback ISBN-13
9780521301060

Digital Object Identifier (DOI) 10.1017/CHOL9780521301060

Overview

This is the fullest and richest account of the American Renaissance available in any literary history. The narratives in this volume made for a four-fold perspective on literature: social, cultural, intellectual and aesthetic. Michael D. Bell describes the social conditions of the literary vocation that shaped the growth of a professional literature in the United States. Eric Sundquist draws upon broad cultural patterns: his account of the writings of exploration, slavery, and the frontier is an interweaving of disparate voices, outlooks and traditions. Barbara L. Packer's sources come largely from intellectual history: the theological and philosophical controversies that prepared the way for transcendentalism. Jonathan Arac's categories are formalist: he sees the development of antebellum fiction as a dialectic of prose genres, the emergence of a literary mode out of the clash of national, local and personal forms. Together, these four narratives constitute a basic reassessment of American prose-writing between 1820 and 1865. It is an achievement that will remain authoritative for our time and that will set new directions for coming decades in American literary scholarship.

For more details of the
print book, and how to buy it online, please see
Prose Writing, 1820–1865 in the Cambridge University Press online
catalogue.

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Literary Studies

The Cambridge History of American Literature

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Introduction

Conditions of Literary Vocation

The Literature of Expansion and Race

The Transcendentalists

Narrative Forms

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