Shirley Samuels 
A Companion to American Fiction, 1780 – 1865 [PDF ebook] 

This Companion presents the current state of criticism in the field of American fiction from the earliest declarations of nationhood to secession and civil war.

* Draws heavily on historical and cultural contexts in its consideration of American fiction

* Relates the fiction of the period to conflicts about territory and sovereignty and to issues of gender, race, ethnicity and identity

* Covers different forms of fiction, including children’s literature, sketches, polemical pieces, historical romances, Gothic novels and novels of exploration

* Considers both canonical and lesser-known authors, including James Fennimore Cooper, Hannah Foster, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Harriet Beecher Stowe

* Treats neglected topics, such as the Western novel, science and the novel, and American fiction in languages other than English

Tabella dei contenuti

List of Illustrations viii

Notes on Contributors ix

Acknowledgments xvi

Introduction 1

Shirley Samuels

PART I Historical and Cultural Contexts 5

1 National Narrative and the Problem of American Nationhood
7

J. Gerald Kennedy

2 Fiction and Democracy 20

Paul Downes

3 Democratic Fictions 31

Sandra M. Gustafson

4 Engendering American Fictions 40

Martha J. Cutter and Caroline F. Levander

5 Race and Ethnicity 52

Robert S. Levine

6 Class 64

Philip Gould

7 Sexualities 75

Valerie Rohy

8 Religion 87

Paul Gutjahr

9 Education and Polemic 97

Stephanie Foote

10 Marriage and Contract 108

Naomi Morgenstern

11 Transatlantic Ventures 119

Wil Verhoeven and Stephen Shapiro

12 Other Languages, Other Americas 131

Kirsten Silva Gruesz

PART II Forms of Fiction 145

13 Literary Histories 147

Michael Drexler and Ed White

14 Breeding and Reading: Chesterfieldian Civility in the Early
Republic 158

Christopher Lukasik

15 The American Gothic 168

Marianne Noble

16 Sensational Fiction 179

Shelley Streeby

17 Melodrama and American Fiction 191

Lori Merish

18 Delicate Boundaries: Passing and Other
”Crossings” in Fictionalized Slave
Narratives 204

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson

19 Doctors, Bodies, and Fiction 216

Stephanie P. Browner

20 Law and the American Novel 228

Laura H. Korobkin

21 Labor and Fiction 239

Cindy Weinstein

22 Words for Children 249

Carol J. Singley

23 Dime Novels 262

Colin T. Ramsey and Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola

24 Reform and Antebellum Fiction 274

Chris Castiglia

PART III Authors, Locations, Purposes 285

25 The Problem of the City 287

Heather Roberts

26 New Landscapes 301

Timothy Sweet

27 The Gothic Meets Sensation: Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar
Allan Poe, George Lippard, and E. D. E. N. Southworth 314

Dana Luciano

28 Retold Legends: Washington Irving, James Kirke Paulding, and
John Pendleton Kennedy 330

Philip Barnard

29 Captivity and Freedom: Ann Eliza Bleecker, Harriet Prescott
Spofford, and Washington Irving’s ”Rip Van
Winkle” 342

Eric Gary Anderson

30 New England Tales: Catharine Sedgwick, Catherine Brown, and
the Dislocations of Indian Land 353

Bethany Schneider

31 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Caroline Lee Hentz, Herman Melville,
and American Racialist Exceptionalism 365

Katherine Adams

32 Fictions of the South: Southern Portraits of Slavery
378

Nancy Buffington

33 The West 388

Edward Watts

34 The Old Southwest: Mike Fink, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet,
Johnson Jones Hooper, and George Washington Harris 400

David Rachels

35 James Fenimore Cooper and the Invention of the American Novel
411

Wayne Franklin

36 The Sea: Herman Melville and Moby-Dick 425

Stephanie A. Smith

37 National Narrative and National History 434

Russ Castronovo

Index 445

Circa l’autore

Shirley Samuels is Professor of English and American Studies at Cornell University. She is the author of Romances of the Republic (1996) and Facing America: Iconography and the Civil War (2004), and the editor of The Culture of Sentiment (1992). She is also currently the section editor of ‘American Literature before 1865’ for the Blackwell online www.literature-compass.com.