American Literature and American Identity

A Cognitive Cultural Study from the Civil War to the Twenty-First Century
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-032-07895-3
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 286 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 571 g

Reihe: Narrative Theory and Culture

In recent years, cognitive and affective science have become increasingly important for interpretation and explanation in the social sciences and humanities. However, little of this work has addressed American literature, and virtually none has treated national identity formation in influential works since the Civil War. In this book, Hogan develops his earlier cognitive and affective analyses of national identity, further exploring the ways in which such identity is integrated with cross-culturally recurring patterns in story structure. Hogan examines how authors imagined American identity—understood as universal, democratic egalitarianism—in the face of the nation’s clear and often brutal inequalities of race, sex, and sexuality, exploring the complex and often ambivalent treatment of American identity in works by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Eugene O’Neill, Lillian Hellman, Djuna Barnes, Amiri Baraka, Margaret Atwood, N. Scott Momaday, Spike Lee, Leslie Marmon Silko, Tony Kushner, and Heidi Schreck.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hogan, Patrick Colm

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gewalt und Diskriminierung: Soziale Aspekte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction. Celebratory Nationalism, Critical Nationalism, and Disillusion: America After the Civil War

Chapter One. National Identity and National Emplotment

Part One: Race (I): Native America

Chapter Two: Love and Death: Adapting The Last of the Mohicans

Chapter Three: Heroism, Sacrifice, and Ancestral Memory: N. Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain

Chapter Four: Blood and Soil: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony

Part Two: Race (II): African America

Chapter Five: Heroic Narrative and Colonialism: Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones

Chapter Six: Heroic Narrative and Black Masculinity: Leroi Jones’s Dutchman and The Slave

Chapter Seven: Against Despair: Spike Lee’s Malcolm X

Part Three: Sexual Orientation

Chapter Eight: Sexual Preference and the Purpose of a Democratic Nation: Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour

Chapter Nine: The National Community and Its Alternatives: Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood

Chapter Ten: Institutions and Communities: Tony Kushner’s Angels in America

Part Four: Sex and Gender

Chapter Eleven: Sex Hierarchies and Utopia: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland

Chapter Twelve: Sex Hierarchies and Dystopia: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Chapter Thirteen: Sex Hierarchies and the Law Today: Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me

Afterword: A Note on Pessimism of the Intellect and Optimism of the Will

Über Autor(innen)

Patrick Colm Hogan is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut, where he is on the faculty of the English Department and the Program in Cognitive Science. He is the author of over 20 books, including Literature and Emotion (2018) and American Literature and American Identity: A Cognitive Cultural Study from the Revolution through the Civil War (2020).