Cambridge History Of American Literatur

This text addresses the spectrum of new and established directions in American writing. An interdisciplinary distillation of American literary history, it weds the voice of traditional criticism with the diversity of interests that characterise contemporary literary studies. Volume I of The Cambridge History of American Literature was originally published in 1997, and covers the colonial and early national periods and discusses the work of a diverse assemblage of authors, from Renaissance explorers and Puritan theocrats to Revolutionary pamphleteers and poets and novelists of the new republic. Addressing those characteristics that render the texts distinctively American while placing the literature in an international perspective, the contributors offer a compelling new evaluation of both the literary importance of early American history and the historical value of early American literature.