The Cambridge History Of American Literature, Vol. 2: Prose Writing, 1820-1865

This multivolume History marks a new beginning in the study of American literature. It embodies the work of a generation of Americanists who have redrawn the boundaries of the field and redefined the terms of its development. The extraordinary growth of the field has called for and here receives a more expansive, more flexible scholarly format. All previous histories of American literature have been either totalizing, offering the magisterial sweep of a single vision, or encyclopedic, composed of a multitude of terse accounts that come to seem just as totalizing and preclude the development of authorial voice. Here, American literary history unfolds through a polyphony of large-scale narratives. Each is ample enough in scope and detail to allow for the elaboration of distinctive views (premises, arguments, and analyses); each is persuasive by demonstration and authoritative in its own right; and each is related to the others through common themes and concerns. The authors were selected for the excellence of their scholarship and for the significance of the critical communities informing their work. Together, they demonstrate the achievements of Americanist literary criticism over the past three decades. Their contributions to these volumes speak to continuities as well as disruptions between generations and give voice to the wide range of materials now subsumed under the heading of American literature and culture. This volume is the fullest and richest account of the American renaissance available in any literary history. The narratives offer a fourfold perspective on literature: social, cultural, intellectual, and aesthetic. Michael Davitt Bell describes the social conditions of the literary vocation that shaped the growth of a professional literature in the United States. Eric J. Sundquist draws upon broad cultural patterns: his account of the writings of exploration, the frontier, and slavery 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 basically 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. THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE Volume 2 1820—1865 THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE Volume 2 1820—1865 General Editor SACVAN BERCOVITCH Harvard University Associate Editor CYRUS R. K. PATELL New York University w w OT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, NewYork,Melbourne,Madrid,CapeTown,Singapore,Sa ~ oPaulo CambridgeUniversityPress The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyCambridgeUniversityPress,NewYork www.cambridge.org Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/97 805 2130106 © Cambridge Univer