Includes bibliographical references (pages 181-193) and index.
Contents:
Prologue: eyes on the stranger -- Introduction -- Face to face with the stranger. Ralph Waldo Emerson on national identity; Herman Melville's Redburn: in the company of strangers; Nathaniel Hawthorne's foreign reflections -- The domestic other. James Fenimore Cooper: defining master and servant; Walt Whitman: a sympathetic glance at "Bridget" -- Landscape with strangers. Nathaniel Hawthorne and the changing face of America; Henry David Thoreau and his foreign neighbors -- Views from the city -- Epilogue.
Summary:
"This book examines the close relationship between the portrayal of foreigners and the delineation of culture and identity in antebellum American writing. Both literary and historical in its approach, this study shows how in a period marked by extensive immigration, heated debates on national and racial traits, and an unprecedented flowering in American letters, the responses of American authors to outsiders not only contain precious insights into 19th-century America's self-construction, but also serve to illuminate our own time's multicultural societies. The authors under consideration are alternately canonical (Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville), recently rediscovered (Kirkland), or simply neglected (Arthur). The texts analyzed cover such different genres as diaries, letters, newspapers, manuals, novels, stories, and poems"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.