In the mid-nineteenth century writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne
and Herman Melville produced works of fiction that even today,
centuries later, help to define what American literature means. In
this work of innovative literary history, Jonathan Arac explains
what made this remarkable creativity possible and what it
accomplished. His work also delves into a deep paradox that has
haunted American literature: our nation's great works of literary
narrative place themselves at a tense distance from our national
life.
Arac prepares the way with substantial critical readings of
masterpieces such as "Moby-Dick," "The Scarlet Letter," "Uncle
Tom's Cabin," and the "Narrative of Frederick Douglass," as well as
astute commentary on dozens of other works of fiction, comic
sketches, life testimony, and history. His interpretation
demonstrates how the national crisis over slavery around 1850 led
writers to invent new forms. In light of this analysis, Arac
proposes an explanation for the shifting relations between prose
narratives and American political history; he shows how these new
works changed the understanding of what prose narrative was capable
of doing--and how this moment when the literary writer was
redefined as an artist inaugurated a continuing crisis in the
relation of narrative to its public.
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