Literary Culture and U.S Imperialism From the Revolution to World War II

by Rowe, John Carlos

• ISBN13: 9780195131512
• ISBN10: 0195131517
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-07-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

John Carlos Rowe, considered one of the most eminent and progressive critics of American literature, has in recent years become instrumental in shaping the path of American studies. His latest book examines literary responses to U.S. imperialism from the late eighteenth century to the 1940s. Interpreting texts by Charles Brockden Brown, Poe, Melville, John Rollin Ridge, Twain, Henry Adams, Stephen Crane, W. E. B. Du Bois, John Neihardt, Nick Black Elk, and Zora Neale Hurston, Rowe argues that U.S. literature has a long tradition of responding critically or contributing to our imperialist ventures. Following in the critical footsteps of Richard Slotkin and Edward Said, Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism is particularly innovative in taking account of the public and cultural response to imperialism. In this sense it could not be more relevant to what is happening in the scholarship, and should be vital reading for scholars and students of American literature and culture.

Author Biography

John Carlos Rowe is Professor of English at the University of California at Irvine and the author of At Emersons Tomb: The Politics of Classic American Literature, The Other Henry James, and Through the Custom-House: Nineteenth-Century American Fiction and Modern Theory.

Table of Contents

Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism	3	(22)
The Dream of Enlightenment and the Nightmare of Imperialism: Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland and Edgar Huntly	25	(28)
Edgar Allan Poe's Imperial Fantasy and the American Frontier	53	(24)
Melville's Typee: U.S. Imperialism at Home and Abroad	77	(20)
Highway Robbery: ``Indian Removal,'' the Mexican-American War, and American Identity in John Rollin Ridge's (Yellow Bird) The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta	97	(24)
Mark Twain's Rediscovery of America in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court	121	(20)
Race, Gender, and Imperialism in Stephen Crane: A Monstrous Case	141	(24)
The Education of Henry Adams and the American Empire	165	(30)
W. E. B. Du Bois's Tropical Critique of U.S. Imperialism	195	(22)
The View from Rock Writing Bluff: The Nick Black Elk Narratives and U.S. Cultural Imperialism	217	(36)
Opening the Gate to the Other America: The Afro-Caribbean Politics of Hurston's Mules and Men and Tell My Horse	253	(40)
After America	293	(6)
Notes	299	(68)
Index	367