The Cambridge History of American Literature: Volume 2, Prose Writing 1820–1865

This is the fullest and richest account of the American Renaissance available in any literary history. The narratives in this volume made for a four-fold perspective on literature: social, cultural, intellectual and aesthetic. Michael D. Bell describes the social conditions of the literary vocation that shaped the growth of a professional literature in the United States. Eric Sundquist draws upon broad cultural patterns: his account of the writings of exploration, slavery, and the frontier is an interweaving of disparate voices, outlooks and traditions. Barbara L. Packer’s sources come largely from intellectual history: the theological and philosophical controversies that prepared the way for transcendentalism. Jonathan Arac’s categories are formalist: he sees the development of antebellum fiction as a dialectic of prose genres, the emergence of a literary mode out of the clash of national, local and personal forms. Together, these four narratives constitute a basic reassessment of American prose-writing between 1820 and 1865. It is an achievement that will remain authoritative for our time and that will set new directions for coming decades in American literary scholarship.

• First large-scale, multi-volume History of American Literature • Continues from Volume I which spans the period 1590–1820 • Covers the literatures of expansion, American Indians, African American slaves, the transcendentalists

Conditions of Literary Vocation, 1820–1850 Michael D. Bell; 2. The literature of the expansion and race conflict Eric Sundquist; 3. The transcendentalists Barbara L. Packer; Narrative forms Jonathan Arac.

\'… this is, without doubt and without any serious rival, the scholarly history for our generation.\' Journal of American Studies

‘… vast and eminently readable survey of twentieth century American literature …’. Use of English