Literary Culture and U.S Imperialism: From the Revolution to World War II [Hardcover]

John Carlos Rowe (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195131509 | ISBN-13: 978-0195131505 | Publication Date: July 6, 2000

John Carlos Rowe, considered one of the most eminent and progressive critics of American literature, has in recent years become instrumental in shaping the path of American studies. His latest book examines literary responses to U.S. imperialism from the late eighteenth century to the 1940s. Interpreting texts by Charles Brockden Brown, Poe, Melville, John Rollin Ridge, Twain, Henry Adams, Stephen Crane, W. E. B Du Bois, John Neihardt, Nick Black Elk, and Zora Neale Hurston, Rowe argues that U.S. literature has a long tradition of responding critically or contributing to our imperialist ventures. Following in the critical footsteps of Richard Slotkin and Edward Said, Literary Culture and U.S. Imperialism is particularly innovative in taking account of the public and cultural response to imperialism. In this sense it could not be more relevant to what is happening in the scholarship, and should be vital reading for scholars and students of American literature and culture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Nevertheless, this is a rich and powerful book, which effectively reconfigures the older virtues of textual analysis within a sophisticated framework of cutting-edge cultural theory... as intelligent as it is wide-ranging, whose plethora of provocative and pedagogically useful material will make it entirely indispensable for academic libraries."--Imperial Literary Culture

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

John Carlos Rowe is Professor of English at the University of California at Irvine and the author of At Emersons Tomb: The Politics of Classic American Literature, The Other Henry James, and Through the Custom-House: Nineteenth-Century American Fiction and Modern Theory.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (July 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195131509
• ISBN-13: 978-0195131505
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,241,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars kindle version poorly formatted, August 23, 2009

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manywingedboat (CA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Literary Culture and U.S Imperialism: From the Revolution to World War II (Kindle Edition)

The low rating is for the kindle version only, which was so poorly formatted as to make me put off reading Rowe's book until I can get it out of the library. Periods are frequently used instead of commas, dates are split across lines and the endnotes are not linked, which in my experience means they might as well not exist for the good they do me.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars from the Revolution onwards, March 28, 2009

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Literary Culture and U.S Imperialism: From the Revolution to World War II (Paperback)

When one thinks of overt American imperialism, it is commonly associated with the period just before World War 1, when jingoism entered the public parlance, in association with an aggressive expansionism and, incidentally, Teddy Roosevelt. Specifically, the Spanish-American war and the annexation of Cuba and Philippines are now considered the 'high noon' of that era.

But Rowe takes us back further. He traces antecedents in thought back to the Revolution itself. From popular contemporary writings, some now quite obscure, he shows attitudes that conflated expansion of the nation with an ideal that made this seem natural or ordained by God. Where the technological superiority of the American settlers over natives or Mexicans reflected an innate superiority.

The broad outlines of the book have already been well known in many analyses of the doctrine of manifest destiny. Though the gleanings from writings that Rowe gives here are interesting, in that they are rarely found in those studies.