The multifaceted scholarly and critical enterprise embodied in The Cambridge History of American Literature addresses these multiplicities-the social, the cultural, the intellectual, and the aesthetic-and demonstrates a richer concept of authority in literary studies than is found in earlier accounts.

The Cambridge History of American Literature addresses the broad spectrum of new and established directions in all branches of American writing and includes the work of scholars and critics who have shaped, and who continue to shape, what has become a major area of literary scholarship. The authors span three decades of achievement in American literary criticism, thereby speaking for the continuities as well as the disruptions sustained between generations of scholarship. Generously proportioned narratives allow at once for a broader vision and sweep of American literary history than has been possible previously, and while the voice of traditional criticism forms a background for these narratives, it joins forces with the diversity of interests that characterize contemporary literary studies.The History offers wide-ranging,interdisciplinary accounts of American genres and periods. Generated partly by the recent unearthing of previously neglected texts, the expansion of material in American literature coincides with a dramatic increase in the number and variety of approaches to that material. The multifaceted scholarly and critical enterprise embodied in The Cambridge History of American Literature addresses these multiplicities - the social, the cultural, the intellectual, and the aesthetic - and demonstrates a richer concept of authority in literary studies than is found in earlier accounts.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

THE LITERATURE OF COLONIZATION

Myra Jehlen, Rutgers University

1 The Papers or Empire

2 The Natural Inhabitants

3 Three Writers of Early America

4 Settlements

5 The Dispute of the New World

6 Traveling in America

7 The Final Voyage

NEW ENGLAND PURITAN LITERATURE Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside

1 The Language of Salem Witchcraft

2 The Dream of a Christian Utopia

3 Personal Narrative and History

4 Poetry

5 The Jeremiad

6 Reason and Revivalism

BRITISH-AMERICAN BELLES LETTRES David S. Shields, The Citadel

THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT, 1750- 1820 Robert A. Ferguson, Columbia University

1 Finding the Revolution

2 What Is Enlightenment? Some American Answers

3 Religious Voices

4 Writing the Revolution

5 The Literature of Public Documents

6 The Limits of Enlightenment

THE LITERATURE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIODS Michael T. Gilmore, Brandeis University

1 Letters of the Early Republic

2 Magazines, Criticism, and Essays;

3 The Drama

4 Poetry

5 The Novel

6 Charles Brockden Brown

7 Washington Irving

8 James Fenimore Cooper

Chronology

Bibliography

Index