The Cambridge History of the American Novel

An authoritative and lively account of the development of the genre, by leading experts in the field.

Leonard Cassuto (Edited by), Clare Virginia Eby (Associate editor), Benjamin Reiss (Associate editor)

9780521899079, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 March 2011

1272 pages, 8 b/w illus. 2 tables
23.5 x 16 x 6 cm, 2.1 kg

'… an innovative approach that is bound to prove as stimulating as the best of American fiction already does.' Contemporary Review

This ambitious literary history traces the American novel from its emergence in the late eighteenth century to its diverse incarnations in the multi-ethnic, multi-media culture of the present day. In a set of original essays by renowned scholars from all over the world, the volume extends important critical debates and frames new ones. Offering new views of American classics, it also breaks new ground to show the role of popular genres - such as science fiction and mystery novels - in the creation of the literary tradition. One of the original features of this book is the dialogue between the essays, highlighting cross-currents between authors and their works as well as across historical periods. While offering a narrative of the development of the genre, the History reflects the multiple methodologies that have informed readings of the American novel and will change the way scholars and readers think about American literary history.

General introduction
Part I. Inventing the American Novel: Introduction
1. Transatlantic currents and the invention of the American novel
2. Susanna Rowson, Hannah Webster Foster, and the seduction novel in the early US
3. Charles Brockden Brown and the novels of the early Republic
4. The novel in the antebellum book market
5. American land, American landscape, American novels
6. Cooper and the idea of the Indian
7. The nineteenth-century historical novel
8. Hawthorne and the aesthetics of American romance
9. Melville and the novel of the sea
10. Religion and the nineteenth-century American novel
11. Manhood in the early American novel
12. Sentimentalism
13. Supernatural novels
14. Imagining the South
15. Stowe, race and the antebellum American novel
16. The early African American novel
Part II. Realism, Protest, Accommodation: Introduction
17. Realism and radicalism: the school of Howells
18. James, pragmatism, and the realist ideal
19. Theories of the American novel in the age of realism
20. The novel in postbellum print culture
21. Twain, class, and the Gilded Age
22. Dreiser and the city
23. Novels of civic protest
24. Novels of American business, industry, and consumerism
25. New Americans and the immigrant novel
26. Cather and the regional imagination
27. Wharton, marriage, and the new woman
28. The postbellum racial novel
29. The African American novel after Reconstruction
30. Literary Darwinism and the rise of naturalism
31. Imagining the frontier
32. Imperialism, orientalism, and Empire
33. The Hemispheric novel in the post-Revolutionary era
34. The woman's novel beyond sentimentalism
35. Dime novels and the rise of mass market genres
36. Readers and reading groups
Part III. Modernism and Beyond: Introduction
37. Hemingway, Stein, and American modernisms
38. The Great Gatsby and the 1920s
39. Philosophy and the American novel
40. Steinbeck and the proletarian novel
41. The novel, mass culture, mass media
42. Wright, Hurston, and the direction of the African American novel
43. Ellison and Baldwin: aesthetics, activism, and the social order
44. Religion and the twentieth-century American novel
45. Faulkner and the Southern novel
46. Law and the American novel
47. Twentieth-century publishing and the rise of the paperback
48. The novel of crime, mystery, and suspense
49. US novels and US wars
50. Science fiction
51. Female genre fiction in the twentieth century
52. Children's novels
53. The American novel and the rise of the suburbs
54. The Jewish great American novel
55. The Beats and the 1960s
56. Literary feminisms
57. Reimagining genders and sexualities
Part IV. Contemporary Formations: Introduction
58. Postmodern novels
59. The nonfiction novel
60. Disability and the American novel
61. Model minorities and the minority model – the neoliberal novel
62. The American Borderlands novel
63. The rise of the Asian American novel
64. Toni Morrison and the post-Civil Rights African American novel
65. Hemispheric American novels
66. The worlding of the American novel
67. The Native American tradition
68. Eco-novels
69. Graphic novels
70. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary communities
71. A history of the future of narrative
A selected bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary companions, book reviews & guides [DSRC], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literary essays [DNF], Literature & literary studies [D]