DISLOCATING RACE AND NATION by Robert S. Levine ( 9780807832264 )

Item Details

Title:

DISLOCATING RACE AND NATION
EPISODES IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERARY NATIONALISM

By:

Format:

Hardback

List price:	£62.95
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ISBN 10:

080783226X

ISBN 13:

9780807832264

Publisher:

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

Pub. date:

1 October, 2008

Pages:

336

Description:

American literary nationalism is traditionally understood as a cohesive literary tradition developed in the newly independent United States that emphasized the unique features of America and consciously differentiated American literature from British literature. This title challenges this assessment.

Synopsis:

This title presents literary responses to questions of U.S. racial nationalism and imperialism.American literary nationalism is traditionally understood as a cohesive literary tradition developed in the newly independent United States that emphasized the unique features of America and consciously differentiated American literature from British literature. Robert Levine challenges this assessment by exploring the conflicted, multi-racial, and contingent dimensions present in the works of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American and African American writers. Conflict and uncertainty, not consensus, Levine argues, helped define American literary nationalism during this period.Levine emphasizes the centrality of both inter- and intra-American conflict in his analysis of four illuminating "episodes" of literary responses to questions of U.S. racial nationalism and imperialism.He examines Charles Brockden Brown and the Louisiana Purchase; David Walker and the debates on the Missouri Compromise; Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Hannah Crafts and the blood-based literary nationalism and expansionism of the mid-nineteenth century; and, Frederick Douglass and his interest in Haiti. Levine offers critiques of recent developments in whiteness and imperialism studies, arguing that a renewed attention to the place of contingency in American literary history helps us to better understand and learn from writers trying to make sense of their own historical moments.

Publication:

Imprint:

The University of North Carolina Press

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

A COMPANION TO AMERICAN LITERARY STUDIES