The Birth-Mark

Howe, Susan

ISBN 10: 0819562637 / ISBN 13: 9780819562630

Published by Wesleyan University Press, 1993

Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0819562637I3N00

Synopsis:

A stimulating examination of early American literature

Susan Howe approaches early American literature as pet and critic, blending scholarship with passionate commitment and unique view of her subject. The Birth-mark traces the collusive relationships among tradition, the constitution of critical editions, literary history and criticism, the institutionalized roles of poetry and prose, and the status of gender. Through an examination of the texts and editorial histories of Thomas Shepard's conversion narratives, the captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Howe reads our intellectual inheritance as a series of civil wars, where each text is a wilderness in which a strange and lawless author confronts interpreters and editors eager for settlement. In a concluding interview, Howe comments on her approach and recounts some the crucial biographical events that sparked her interest in early American literature.

About the Author:

SUSAN HOWE is a poet and Professor of English at the State University of New York- Buffalo. She is also the author of numerous critical essays including My Emily Dickinson (1985), and most recently "Sorting Facts; or, Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker" in Beyond Document: Essays on Nonfiction Film (Wesleyan, 1996), edited by Charles Watten. Her books of poetry include Singularities (1990), The Europe of Trusts: Selected Poems (1989), Articulation of Sound Forms in Time (1987), and most recently, Frame Structures: Early poems, 1974-1979 (1995).

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Birth-Mark
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Publication Date: 1993
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket