American Literature and the American Past: Uses of History by Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Writers

FAIN: FT-12898-76

Jeffrey Steinbrink
Franklin and Marshall College (Lancaster, PA 17603-2827)

To examine the ways in which native authors have regarded and made use of the American past. The includes discussions of Cooper, Hawthorne, Twain, and Fitzgerald, all of whom believed in the relevance of history. Sections on Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman will be completed during the summer, they did not share the ultimate importance of the past. There will be also a section on Willa Cather whose treatment of history reflects the intense curiosity about the past which three centuries of life in the New World have elicited from the modern American.