Literary Selves and Grand Narratives in the First American Century

From Table of Contents:
◊ Washington Irving and his "Humor & Horror" version of Early American Identity
◊ The Rise of the American Frontier Narrative: James Fenimore Cooper
◊ Reason and Unreason: Edgar Allan Poe
◊ Herman Melville`s American Gothic

What this volume significantly contributes to numerous other contextual approaches to American literary phenomena is the articulation of a conceptual framework offered by a number of theories of identity which emerged and developed in the post-Enlightenment age, particularly from the second half of the 19th century onward, in the context of identity crises produced by, or linked to, industrialization and secularization. This framework includes a series of concepts, distinctions and pronouncements which have been found useful in the explorations of literary communication by means of the complex interactions that this type of communication involves, in addition to the mere, "distinterested" reading of the texts proper. This theoretical construct takes shape as a selective history of the concept and of the theories about identity, focusing on, critically exploring and appraising the important developments that the 20th century contributed to it (the psychoanalytic, structuralist, poststructuralist paths), more specifically dealing with the theories of identity and social identity from postwar and contemporary social psychology.

Eduard Vlad
Florian Andrei Vlad