American Fiction The Intellectual Background Routledge Library Editions: The American Novel Series

Originally published in 1963. The ?Americanness? of the American novel is as readily apparent as it is elusive of definition. It is the purpose of this study not to discover the reluctant formula, the comprehensive statement of national identity, but to examine the evidences of this identity in the work of some individual American writers. This study explores the works of many prominent American authors including Edgar Allan Poe, Nathanial Hawthorne, and Mark Twain.

Acknowledgments; 1. The Poetic Inception 2. Poe and the Romantic Experiment 3. Politics and Pastoral in Cooper 4. The Tragic Phase: Melville and Hawthorne 5. Twain as Satirist 6. Edith Wharton and the Realists 7. Modern American Fiction and its Inheritance; Appendices; Index