Transnational Na(rra)tion: Home and Homeland in Nineteenth-Century American Literature - Hardcover

Dolis, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1611478154 ISBN 13: 9781611478150

Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015

Synopsis

This book examines American literary texts whose portrayal of "American" identity involves the incorporation of a "foreign body" as the precondition for a comprehensive understanding of itself. This nexus of disconcerting textual dynamics arises precisely insofar as both citizen/subject and national identity depend upon a certain alterity, an "other" which constitutes the secondary term of a binary structure. "American" identity thus finds itself ironically con-fused and interwoven with another culture or another nation, double-crossed in the enactment of itself. Individual chapters are devoted to Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, Frederick Douglass, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mark Twain.

About this title

About the Author

John Dolis is professor of English and American studies at Penn State University, Scranton.

Review

This book examines American literary texts whose portrayal of "American" identity involves the incorporation of a "foreign body"—specifically, a foreign culture or nation—as the precondition for a comprehensive understanding of itself. Individual chapters are devoted to Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, Frederick Douglass, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mark Twain.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1611478154
• ISBN 13: 9781611478150
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 212