1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910777988203321

Autore

Wald Priscilla

Titolo

Constituting Americans [[electronic resource] ] : cultural anxiety and narrative form / / Priscilla Wald

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Durham, : Duke University Press, 1995

ISBN

1-282-90432-9

9786612904325

0-8223-8190-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (410 p.)

Collana

New Americanists

Disciplina

973/.01/9

Soggetti

Group identity - United States - History

Narration (Rhetoric) - Political aspects - United States

Political culture - United States - History

American literature - 19th century - History and criticism

American literature - 20th century - History and criticism

National characteristics, American, in literature

Group identity in literature

Anxiety in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [353]-374) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- 1 Neither Citizen Nor Alien: National Narratives, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Self-Definition -- 2 "As From a Faithful Mirror": Pierre, Our Nig, and Literary Nationalism -- 3 "The Strange Meaning of Being Black": The Souls of Black Folk and the Narrative of History -- 4 A "Losing-Self Sense": The Making of Americans and the Anxiety of Identity -- Coda: An American "We".

Sommario/riassunto

Ever since the founders drafted ""We the People,"" ""we"" have been at pains to work out the contradictions in their formulation, to fix in words precisely what it means to be American. Constituting Americans rethinks the way that certain writers of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century contributed to this project; in doing so, it revises the traditional narrative of U.S. literary history, restoring an essential chapter to the story of an emerging American cultural identity. In



diverse ways, very different writers-including Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Harriet Wilson, W. E. B.