The Importance of Feeling English: American Literature and the British Diaspora, 1750-1850 (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: sentimental libertine, seduction stories, seduction story, United States, Brockden Brown, North America (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Tennenhouse argues persuasively that the severance of political ties between London and the thirteen colonies did not provoke a...division in the cultural sphere. Americans continued to think of themselves as culturally English for a long time. [Tennenhouse] casts this rich and fascinating book [as] a contribution to the study of American literature, but it has much to say about English literature of the period. It deserves to be widely read on both sides of the Atlantic.
(John D. Baird Times Literary Supplement )

In revisiting the landscape of early American literature, The Importance of Feeling English radically revises its features. Tennenhouse focuses on the concept of transatlantic circulation and shows how some of the first American authors applied their perspective to existing British literary models.
(Times Higher Education )

This important book has implications for a far wider account of cultural exchange than Tennenhouse himself focuses on here. . . . The Importance of Feeling English encourages additional consideration about the relationships among diasporic cultures, including Spanish and African, in frontiers far away from the Northeast, which might be more sensitive to spatial and regional differences in an expanding United States.
(Spencer Snow Common-place )

Review

This book challenges the very notion of 'American Literature'--what it is and how we date it--by daring not to assume 'that different national governments mean different national literatures.' It does so from a transatlantic perspective that, in Tennenhouse's hands, achieves a new maturity and power. In reconceiving American literature, The Importance of Feeling English also points the way to a new understanding of British literary history.
(Clifford Siskin, New York University )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 170 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (July 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691096813
• ISBN-13: 978-0691096810
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #882,108 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)