Offers an invaluable introduction to American literature for students at all levels, academic and ge
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"Richard Gray's real achievement is somehow to have compressed more than 400 years of thrillingly rich literary history between two covers." (Literary Review)
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
1 The First Americans: American Literature Before and During the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 1
Imagining Eden 1
Native American Oral Traditions 4
Spanish and French Encounters with America 14
Anglo-American Encounters 21
Writing of the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 27
Puritan narratives 28
Challenges to the Puritan oligarchy 32
Some colonial poetry 36
Enemies within and without 44
Trends toward the secular and resistance 48
Toward the Revolution 60
Alternative voices of Revolution 69
Writing Revolution: Poetry, drama, fiction 75
2 Inventing Americas: The Making of American Literature, 1800–1865 88
Making a Nation 88
The Making of American Myths 92
Myths of an emerging nation 92
The making of Western myth 95
The making of Southern myth 105
Legends of the Old Southwest 109
The Making of American Selves 114
The Transcendentalists 114
Voices of African-American identity 126
The Making of Many Americas 133
Native American writing 134
Oral culture of the Hispanic Southwest 139
African-American polemic and poetry 141
Abolitionist and pro-slavery writing 145
Abolitionism and feminism 154
African-American writing 161
The Making of an American Fiction and Poetry 171
The emergence of American narratives 171
Women writers and storytellers 190
Spirituals and folk songs 196
American poetic voices 199
3 Reconstructing the Past, Reimagining the Future: The Development of American Literature, 1865–1900 219
Rebuilding a Nation 219
The Development of Literary Regionalism 224
From Adam to outsider 224
Regionalism in the West and Midwest 231
African-American and Native American voices 233
Regionalism in New England 235
Regionalism in the South 239
The Development of Literary Realism and Naturalism 255
Capturing the commonplace 255
Capturing the real thing 259
Toward Naturalism 269
The Development of Women’s Writing 281
Writing by African-American women 281
Writing and the condition of women 284
The Development of Many Americas 290
Things fall apart 290
Voices of resistance 293
Voices of reform 295
The immigrant encounter 299
4 Making It New: The Emergence of Modern American Literature, 1900–1945 308
Changing National Identities 308
Between Victorianism and Modernism 320
The problem of race 320
Building bridges: Women writers 326
Critiques of American provincial life 336
Poetry and the search for form 345
The Inventions of Modernism 359
Imagism, Vorticism, and Objectivism 359
Making it new in poetry 367
Making it new in prose 397
Making it new in drama 420
Traditionalism, Politics, and Prophecy 431
The uses of traditionalism 431
Populism and radicalism 446
Prophetic voices 462
Community and Identity 466
Immigrant writing 466
Native American voices 472
The literature of the New Negro movement and beyond 476
Mass Culture and the Writer 503
Western, detective, and hardboiled fiction 503
Humorous writing 509
Fiction and popular culture 512
5 Negotiating the American Century: American Literature since 1945 519
Toward a Transnational Nation 519
Formalists and Confessionals 532
From the mythological eye to the lonely “I” in poetry 532
From formalism to freedom in poetry 540
The uses of formalism 548
Confessional poetry 554
New formalists, new confessionals 563
Public and Private Histories 568
Documentary and dream in prose 568
Contested identities in prose 576
Crossing borders: Some women prose writers 588
Beats, Prophets, Aesthetes, and New Formalists 599
Rediscovering the American voice: The Black Mountain writers 599
Restoring the American vision: The San Francisco Renaissance 606
Recreating American rhythms: The beat generation 610
Reinventing the American self: The New York poets 615
Redefining American poetry: The New Formalists 623
Resisting orthodoxy: Dissent and experiment in fiction 631
The Art and Politics of Race 640
Defining a new black aesthetic 640
Defining a new black identity in prose 651
Defining a new black identity in drama 663
Telling impossible stories: Recent African-American fiction 668
Realism and its Discontents 678
Confronting the real, stretching the realistic in drama 678
New Journalists and dirty realists 700
Language and Genre 705
Watching nothing: Postmodernity in prose 705
The actuality of words: Postmodern poetry 720
Signs and scenes of crime, science fiction, and fantasy 727
Creating New Americas 740
Dreaming history: European immigrant writing 740
Remapping a nation: Chicano/a and Latino/a writing 748
Improvising America: Asian-American writing 763
New and ancient songs: The return of the Native American 779
After the Fall: American Literature since 9/11 795
Writing the crisis in prose 795
Writing the crisis in drama 809
Writing the crisis in poetry 816
Further Reading 829
Index 857
