Updated throughout and with much new material, A History of
American Literature, Second Edition, is the most up-to-date and
comprehensive survey available of the myriad forms of American
Literature from pre-Columbian times to the present.

* The most comprehensive and up-to-date history of American
literature available today

* Covers fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction, as well as
other forms of literature including folktale, spirituals, the
detective story, the thriller, and science fiction

* Explores the plural character of American literature, including
the contributions made by African American, Native American,
Hispanic and Asian American writers

* Considers how our understanding of American literature has
changed over the past?thirty years

* Situates American literature in the contexts of American
history, politics and society

* Offers an invaluable introduction to American literature for
students at all levels, academic and general readers

Richard Gray is Professor of Literature at the University of Essex and former Distinguished Visiting Professor at a number of universities in the United States. He is the first specialist in American literature to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy and has published over a dozen books on the topic, including the award-winning Writing the South: Ideas of an American Region (1986) and The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography (1994). His History of American Literature (Blackwell, 2004) is widely considered to be one of the standard works on the subject.

Praise for the First Edition:

"Richard Gray's real achievement is somehow to have compressed more than 400 years of thrillingly rich literary history between two covers."
Literary Review

"Highly readable, jargon-free, and engaging."
American Literary Scholarship

"How Gray managed to so captivatingly capture the depth and breadth of so complex a literature in under a thousand pages is worth considering. [] Richard Gray possesses the most balanced scholarship of the entire range of American literature I ever read. [] This is the first history of American literature fully worthy of the multi-dimensionality of its subject."
Norman Weinstein, Boise State University

First published in 2004, A History of American Literature is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed surveys of American literature from pre-Columbian times to the present available today. This widely anticipated second edition features a wealth of fresh updates and new material, including a detailed survey of the fiction, drama, and poetry written in response to 9/11 and the "war on terror." Other additions include coverage of the cultural consequences of the new era in American politics ushered in by the election of President Obama, and the development of new literary and cultural movements such as the New Formalists.

Written in an informed and approachable style by Richard Gray, one of the leading authorities in the field, this survey helps the reader develop a deeper understanding of and insight into the immense breadth of American literary traditions within the context of American social and cultural history. While focusing on the full range of fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction that has been incorporated into the mainstream literary canon, Gray also considers popular American literary traditions such as oral literature, folktales, spirituals, Westerns, detective stories, thrillers, and science fiction.

Compelling and authoritative, A History of American Literature, Second Edition, continues its tradition of representing an unparalleled introduction to the full breadth and diversity of the American literary tradition.

Zusammenfassung
Updated throughout and with much new material, A History of American Literature, Second Edition, is the most up-to-date and comprehensive survey available of the myriad forms of American Literature from pre-Columbian times to the present.

• The most comprehensive and up-to-date history of American literature available today
• Covers fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction, as well as other forms of literature including folktale, spirituals, the detective story, the thriller, and science fiction
• Explores the plural character of American literature, including the contributions made by African American, Native American, Hispanic and Asian American writers
• Considers how our understanding of American literature has changed over the past?thirty years
• Situates American literature in the contexts of American history, politics and society
• Offers an invaluable introduction to American literature for students at all levels, academic and general readers

Acknowledgments xi

1 The First Americans: American Literature Before and During the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 1

Imagining Eden 1

Native American Oral Traditions 4

Spanish and French Encounters with America 14

Anglo-American Encounters 21

Writing of the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 27

Puritan narratives 28

Challenges to the Puritan oligarchy 32

Some colonial poetry 36

Enemies within and without 44

Trends toward the secular and resistance 48

Toward the Revolution 60

Alternative voices of Revolution 69

Writing Revolution: Poetry, drama, fiction 75

2 Inventing Americas: The Making of American Literature, 1800-1865 88

Making a Nation 88

The Making of American Myths 92

Myths of an emerging nation 92

The making of Western myth 95

The making of Southern myth 105

Legends of the Old Southwest 109

The Making of American Selves 114

The Transcendentalists 114

Voices of African-American identity 126

The Making of Many Americas 133

Native American writing 134

Oral culture of the Hispanic Southwest 139

African-American polemic and poetry 141

Abolitionist and pro-slavery writing 145

Abolitionism and feminism 154

African-American writing 161

The Making of an American Fiction and Poetry 171

The emergence of American narratives 171

Women writers and storytellers 190

Spirituals and folk songs 196

American poetic voices 199

3 Reconstructing the Past, Reimagining the Future: The Development of American Literature, 1865-1900 219

Rebuilding a Nation 219

The Development of Literary Regionalism 224

From Adam to outsider 224

Regionalism in the West and Midwest 231

African-American and Native American voices 233

Regionalism in New England 235

Regionalism in the South 239

The Development of Literary Realism and Naturalism 255

Capturing the commonplace 255

Capturing the real thing 259

Toward Naturalism 269

The Development of Women's Writing 281

Writing by African-American women 281

Writing and the condition of women 284

The Development of Many Americas 290

Things fall apart 290

Voices of resistance 293

Voices of reform 295

The immigrant encounter 299

4 Making It New: The Emergence of Modern American Literature, 1900-1945 308

Changing National Identities 308

Between Victorianism and Modernism 320

The problem of race 320

Building bridges: Women writers 326

Critiques of American provincial life 336

Poetry and the search for form 345

The Inventions of Modernism 359

Imagism, Vorticism, and Objectivism 359

Making it new in poetry 367