Description
Book SynopsisCharts how the cartographies of American literature as an institutional category have varied. Arguing that American literature was consolidated as a distinctively nationalist entity only in the wake of the U S Civil War, this title identifies this formation as extending until the beginning of the Reagan presidency in 1981.
Trade ReviewHonorable Mention for the 2012 BAAS Book Prize, British Association of American Studies Shortlisted for the 2012 American Studies Network Prize "In this richly provocative study, Giles posits a protean map of the American imagination."--Choice "Paul Giles can arguably be considered one of the most significant non-host nation scholars of American writing and culture active today and, consequently is among the first rank of academic literary critics in the current moment. His recent The Global Remapping of American Literature simply stands as one of the high water marks for literary criticism in 2011 so far, and, despite Giles' continuing productivity, ought to be recognized as a career-marking bravura work of skilled reorganization of the field of American Studies itself."--Stephen Shapiro, Review of English Studies "The Global Remapping of American Literature was the first work from Paul Giles that I had the opportunity to read--it alone broadened my perspective on the work of the critic within the ever-shifting world of American literary studies."--Guy Risko, Symploke "The Global Remapping of American Literature is, as has come to be expected of the work of Paul Giles, an excellent addition to the field of American studies... Giles writes with the inevitable authority of a scholar whose critical achievements are consolidated by this latest work."--Theresa Saxon, Years Work in English Studies
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Deterritorialization of American Literature 1 Part One: Temporal Latitudes Chapter 1: Augustan American Literature: An Aesthetics of Extravagance 29 Restoration Legacies: Cook and Byrd 29 The Plantation Epic: Magnalia Christi Americana 42 New World Topographies: Wheatley, Dwight, Alsop 55 Chapter 2: Medieval American Literature: Antebellum Narrativesand the "Map of the Infinite" 70 Emerson, Longfellow, and the Longue Duree 70 "Medieval" Mound Builders and the Archaeological Imagination 86 Hawthorne, Melville, and the Question of Genealogy 97 Part Two: The Boundaries of the Nation Chapter 3: The Arcs of Modernism: Geography as Allegory 111 Postbellum Cartographies: William Dean Howells 111 Ethnic Palimpsests, National Standards 120 "Description without Place": Stevens, Stein, and Modernist Geographies 125 Chapter 4: Suburb, Network, Homeland: National Spaceand the Rhetoric of Broadcasting 141 "Voice of America": Roth, Morrison, DeLillo 141 Lost in Space: John Updike 154 The MTV Generation: Wallace and Eggers 161 Part Three: Spatial Longitudes Chapter 5: Hemispheric Parallax: South Americaand the American South 183 Rotating Perspectives: Bartram, Simms, Marti 183 Regionalism and Pseudo-geography: Hurston and Bishop 199 Mississippi Vulgate: Faulkner and Barthelme 212 Chapter 6: Metaregionalism: The Global Pacific Northwest 223 Reversible Coordinates: The Epistemology of Space 223 Orient and Orientation: Snyder, Le Guin, Brautigan 232 Virtual Canadas: Gibson and Coupland 242 Conclusion: American Literature and theQuestion of Circumference 255 Works Cited 269 Index 305
