The Poetics of National and Racial Identity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, Series Number 139) - Hardcover

Kerkering, John D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521831148 ISBN 13: 9780521831147

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2004

Synopsis

John D. Kerkering's study examines the literary history of racial and national identity in nineteenth-century America. Kerkering argues that writers such as DuBois, Lanier, Simms, and Scott used poetic effects to assert the distinctiveness of certain groups in a diffuse social landscape. Kerkering explores poetry's formal properties, its sound effects, as they intersect with the issues of race and nation. He shows how formal effects, ranging from meter and rhythm to alliteration and melody, provide these writers with evidence of a collective identity, whether national or racial. Through this shared reliance on formal literary effects, national and racial identities, Kerkering shows, are related elements of a single literary history. This is the story of how poetic effects helped to define national identities in Anglo-America as a step toward helping to define racial identities within the United States. This highly original study will command a wide audience of Americanists.

About this title

Book Description:

Examining the literary history of racial and national identity in nineteenth-century America, Kerkering tells the story of how poetry helped define America as a nation before helping to define America into distinct racial categories. Through formal literary effects, national and racial identities become related elements of a single literary history.

About the Author:

John D. Kerkering is Assistant Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago. He has published articles in American Literature and Studies in Romanticism.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0521831148
• ISBN 13: 9780521831147
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 366