A Companion to American Fiction, 1780 - 1865

by Samuels, Shirley

• ISBN13: 9780631234227
• ISBN10: 0631234225
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-11-12
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

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

Author Biography

Shirley Samuels is Professor of English and American Studies at Cornell University. She is the author of Romances of the Republic (1996) and Facing America: Iconography and the Civil War (2004), and the editor of The Culture of Sentiment (1992). She is also currently the section editor of “American Literature before 1865” for the Blackwell online www.literature-compass.com.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	viii
Notes on Contributors	ix
Acknowledgments	xvi
Introduction	1	(4)
Shirley Samuels
PART I Historical and Cultural Contexts	5	(140)
National Narrative and the Problem of American Nationhood	7	(13)
J. Gerald Kennedy
Fiction and Democracy	20	(11)
Paul Downes
Democratic Fictions	31	(9)
Sandra M. Gustafson
Engendering American Fictions	40	(12)
Martha J. Cutter
Caroline F. Levander
Race and Ethnicity	52	(12)
Robert S. Levine
Class	64	(11)
Philip Gould
Sexualities	75	(12)
Valerie Rohy
Religion	87	(10)
Paul Gutjahr
Education and Polemic	97	(11)
Stephanie Foote
Marriage and Contract	108	(11)
Naomi Morgenstern
Transatlantic Ventures	119	(12)
Wil Verhoeven
Stephen Shapiro
Other Languages, Other Americas	131	(14)
Kirsten Silva Gruesz
PART II Forms of Fiction	145	(140)
Literary Histories	147	(11)
Michael Drexler
Ed White
Breeding and Reading: Chesterfieldian Civility in the Early Republic	158	(10)
Christopher Lukasik
The American Gothic	168	(11)
Marianne Noble
Sensational Fiction	179	(12)
Shelley Streeby
Melodrama and American Fiction	191	(13)
Lori Merish
Delicate Boundaries: Passing and Other ``Crossings'' in Fictionalized Slave Narratives	204	(12)
Cherene Sherrard-Johnson
Doctors, Bodies, and Fiction	216	(12)
Stephanie P. Browner
Law and the American Novel	228	(11)
Laura H. Korobkin
Labor and Fiction	239	(10)
Cindy Weinstein
Words for Children	249	(13)
Carol J. Singley
Dime Novels	262	(12)
Colin T. Ramsey
Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola
Reform and Antebellum Fiction	274	(11)
Chris Castiglia
PART III Authors, Locations, Purposes	285	(160)
The Problem of the City	287	(14)
Heather Roberts
New Landscapes	301	(13)
Timothy Sweet
The Gothic Meets Sensation: Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, George Lippard, and E. D. E. N. Southworth	314	(16)
Dana Luciano
Retold Legends: Washington Irving, James Kirke Paulding, and John Pendleton Kennedy	330	(12)
Philip Barnard
Captivity and Freedom: Ann Eliza Bleecker, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and Washington Irving's ``Rip Van Winkle''	342	(11)
Eric Gary Anderson
New England Tales: Catharine Sedgwick, Catherine Brown, and the Dislocations of Indian Land	353	(12)
Bethany Schneider
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Caroline Lee Hentz, Herman Melville, and American Racialist Exceptionalism	365	(13)
Katherine Adams
Fictions of the South: Southern Portraits of Slavery	378	(10)
Nancy Buffington
The West	388	(12)
Edward Watts
The Old Southwest: Mike Fink, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson Jones Hooper, and George Washington Harris	400	(11)
David Rachels
James Fenimore Cooper and the Invention of the American Novel	411	(14)
Wayne Franklin
The Sea: Herman Melville and Moby-Dick	425	(9)
Stephanie A. Smith
National Narrative and National History	434	(11)
Russ Castronovo
Index	445