Overview

This book examines American literary texts whose portrayal of ""American"" identity involves the incorporation of a ""foreign body"" as the precondition for a comprehensive understanding of itself. This nexus of disconcerting textual dynamics arises precisely insofar as both citizen/subject and national identity depend upon a certain alterity, an ""other"" which constitutes the secondary term of a binary structure. ""American"" identity thus finds itself ironically con-fused and interwoven with another culture or another nation, double-crossed in the enactment of itself. Individual chapters are devoted to Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, Frederick Douglass, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mark Twain.

Full Product Details

9781611478150

Table of Contents

Reviews

Author Information

John Dolis is professor of English and American studies at Penn State University, Scranton.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available