CORRESPONDENCE AND AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1770-1865 by Elizabeth Hewitt ( 9780521842556 )

Item Details

Title:

CORRESPONDENCE AND AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1770-1865

By:

Format:

Hardback

List price:	£90.00
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ISBN 10:

0521842557

ISBN 13:

9780521842556

Publisher:

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

25 November, 2004

Series:

Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture No. 146

Pages:

242

Description:

Elizabeth Hewitt uncovers the centrality of letter-writing to antebellum American literature.

Synopsis:

Elizabeth Hewitt uncovers the centrality of letter-writing to antebellum American literature. She argues that many canonical American authors turned to the epistolary form as an idealised genre through which to consider the challenges of American democracy before the Civil War. The letter was the vital technology of social intercourse in the nineteenth century and was adopted as an exemplary genre in which authors from Crevecoeur and Adams through Jefferson, to Emerson, Melville, Dickinson and Whitman, could theorise the social and political themes that were so crucial to their respective literary projects. They interrogated the political possibilities of social intercourse through the practice and analysis of correspondence. Hewitt argues that although correspondence is generally only conceived as a biographical archive, it must instead be understood as a significant genre through which these early authors made sense of social and political relations in the nation.

Publication:

Imprint:

Cambridge University Press

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

COLLECTED WRITINGS OF CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN

COLLECTED WRITINGS OF CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN (HB)

CORRESPONDENCE AND AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1770-1865

CORRESPONDENCE AND AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1770-1865 (PB)

EDGAR ALLAN POE (PB)

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