A Brief History of American Literature

A Brief History of American Literature offers students and general readers a concise and up-to-date history of the full range of American writing from its origins until the present day.  Represents the only up-to-date concise history of American literature  Covers fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction, as well as looking  at other forms of literature including folktales, spirituals, the detective story, the thriller and science fiction Considers how our understanding of American literature has changed over the past twenty years Offers students an abridged version of History of American Literature, a book widely considered the standard   survey text  Provides an invaluable introduction to the subject for students of American literature, American studies and all those interested in the literature and culture of the United States

Preface and Acknowledgments ix 1 The First Americans: American Literature During the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 1 Imagining Eden 1 Writing of the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 1 2 Inventing Americas: The Making of American Literature 1800–1865 47 Making a Nation 47 The Making of American Myths 47 The Making of American Selves 59 The Making of Many Americas 71 The Making of an American Fiction and Poetry 90 3 Reconstructing the Past, Reimagining the Future: The Development of American Literature 1865–1900 115 Rebuilding a Nation 115 The Development of Literary Regionalisms 115 The Development of Literary Realism and Naturalism 130 The Development of Women’s Writing 143 The Development of Many Americas 148 4 Making It New: The Emergence of Modern American Literature 1900–1945 159 Changing National Identities 159 Between Victorianism and Modernism 159 The Inventions of Modernism 176 Traditionalism, Politics, and Prophecy 211 Community and Identity 226 Mass Culture and the Writer 242 5 Negotiating the American Century: American Literature since 1945 249 Towards a Transnational Nation 249 Formalists and Confessionals 249 Public and Private Histories 263 Beats, Prophets, and Aesthetes 281 The Art and Politics of Race 296 Realism and Its Discontents 314 Language and Genre 328 Creating New Americas 345 Index 373