American Literature in Context to 1865 discusses the issues and events that engaged American writers of the period, providing original and useful readings of important literary works that demonstrate how context contributes to meaning Covers a range of genres including the myths, chants and songs of indigenous cultures, sermons, slave narratives, essays and the novels and poetry to 1865 Designed to be used alongside the major anthologies of literature from the period Equips students with the necessary historical context needed to understand the writings from this period Pedagogical features include a detailed bibliography, and a transatlantic timeline, with literary works, and historical events

First published between 1982 and 1983, this series examines the peculiarly American cultural context out of which the nation’s literature has developed. Covering the years from 1865 to 1900, this third volume of American Literature in Context focuses on the struggles of American writers to make sense of their rapidly changing world. In addition to such major figures as Walt Whitman, Henry James, Emily Dickinson and Mark Twain, it analyses the writings of an unorthodox economist (Henry George), a Utopian reformer (Edward Bellamy) and a critical sociologist (Thorstein Veblen). Particular attention is paid to the challenge to conventional literary and cultural values represented by writers such as William Dean Howell who pursued a new form of scientific, democratic realism in American writing. This book will be of interest to those studying American literature and American studies.

First published between 1982 and 1983, this series examines the peculiarly American cultural context out of which the nation’s literature has developed. Covering the years from 1620 to 1930, these four volumes present a coherent, consecutive and comprehensive sequence of interpretations of major American texts, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry and drama. Every chapter includes an extract from the chosen text which serves as a springboard for wider discussion and analysis. Each analysis demonstrates how students can move into and then from the pages of literature to a consideration of the whole text, and thence to an understanding of the author’s oeuvre and of the cultural moment in which he or she lived and wrote. This set will be a valuable resource for students of American literature and American studies.

American Literature in Context to 1865 discusses the issues and events that engaged American writers of the period, providing original and useful readings of important literary works that demonstrate how context contributes to meaning Covers a range of genres including the myths, chants and songs of indigenous cultures, sermons, slave narratives, essays and the novels and poetry to 1865 Designed to be used alongside the major anthologies of literature from the period Equips students with the necessary historical context needed to understand the writings from this period Pedagogical features include a detailed bibliography, and a transatlantic timeline, with literary works, and historical events

American Literature Before 1880 attempts to place its subject in the broadest possible international perspective. It begins with Homer looking westward, and ends with Henry James crossing the Atlantic eastwards. In between, the book examines the projection of images of the East onto an as-yet unrecognised West; the cultural consequences of Viking, Colombian, and then English migration to America; the growth and independence of the British American colonies; the key writers of the new Republic; and the development of the culture of the United States before and after the Civil War. It is intended both as an introduction for undergraduates to the richness and variety of American Literature, and as a contribution to the debate about its distinctive nature. The book therefore begins with a lengthy survey of earlier histories of American Literature.

What is our definition of "modernismif we imagine it stretching from 1865 to 1965 instead of 1890 to 1945? How does the captivity narrative change when we consider it as a contemporary, not just a "colonial,genre? What does the course of American literature look like set against the backdrop of federal denials of Native sovereignty or housing policies that exacerbated segregation? Filled with challenges to scholars, inspirations for teachers (anchored by an appendix of syllabi), and entry points for students, Timelines of American Literature gathers some of the most exciting new work in the field to showcase the revelatory potential of fresh thinking about how we organize the literary past.

This Companion presents the current state of criticism in the field of American fiction from the earliest declarations of nationhood to secession and civil war. Draws heavily on historical and cultural contexts in its consideration of American fiction Relates the fiction of the period to conflicts about territory and sovereignty and to issues of gender, race, ethnicity and identity Covers different forms of fiction, including children’s literature, sketches, polemical pieces, historical romances, Gothic novels and novels of exploration Considers both canonical and lesser-known authors, including James Fennimore Cooper, Hannah Foster, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Harriet Beecher Stowe Treats neglected topics, such as the Western novel, science and the novel, and American fiction in languages other than English

This four-volume reference work surveys American literature from the early 20th century to the present day, featuring a diverse range of American works and authors and an expansive selection of primary source materials. Bringing useful and engaging material into the classroom, this four-volume set covers more than a century of American literary history—from 1900 to the present. Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context profiles authors and their works and provides overviews of literary movements and genres through which readers will understand the historical, cultural, and political contexts that have shaped American writing. Twentieth-Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context provides wide coverage of authors, works, genres, and movements that are emblematic of the diversity of modern America. Not only are major literary movements represented, such as the Beats, but this work also highlights the emergence and development of modern Native American literature, African American literature, and other representative groups that showcase the diversity of American letters. A rich selection of primary documents and background material provides indispensable information for student research.

If 1776 heralds America's Birth of the Nation, so, too, it witnesses the rise of a matching, and overlapping, American Literature. For between the 1770s and the 1820s American writing moves on from the ancestral Puritanism of New England and Virginia - though not, as yet, into the American Renaissance so strikingly called for by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Even so, the concourse of voices which arise in this period, that is between (and including) Benjamin Franklin and James Fenimore Cooper, mark both a key transitional literary generation and yet one all too easily passed over in its own imaginative right. This collection of fifteen specially commissioned essays seeks to establish new bearings, a revision of one of the key political and literary eras in American culture. Not only are Franklin and Cooper themselves carefully re-evaluated in the making of America's new literary republic, but figures like Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, Philip Frencau, William Cullen Bryant, the other Alexander Hamilton, and the playwrights Royall Tyler and William Dunlop. Other essays take a more inclusive perspective, whether American epistolary fiction, a first generation of American women-authored fiction, the public discourse of The Federalist Papers, the rise of the American periodical, or the founding African-American generation of Phillis Wheatley. What unites all the essays is the common assumption that the making of America was as much a matter of creating its national literature; as the making of American literature was a matter of shaping a national identity.

This Companion examines a number of issues related to the terms realism and naturalism. The introduction seeks both to discuss the problems in the use of these two terms in relation to late nineteenth-century fiction and to describe the history of previous efforts to make the terms expressive of American writing of this period. The Companion includes ten essays which fall into four categories: essays on the historical context of realism and naturalism by Louis Budd and Richard Lehan; essays on critical approaches to the movements since the early 1970s by Michael Anesko, essays on the efforts to expand the canon of realism and naturalism by Elizabeth Ammons; and a full-scale discussion of ten major texts, from W. D. Howell's The Rise of Silas Lapham to Jack London's The Call of the Wild, by John W. Crowley, Tom Quirk, J. C. Levenson, Blanche Gelfant, Barbara Hochman, and Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin.