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Played a formative role in our literature and culture. This factor has affected the work of Native American writers, as well as those who came from abroad, some who wrote in English as authors in the United States and some who did not. The study of literature written in English without regard to national boundaries might be a worthy comparatist project, but the substitution of that study for the present one would involve an ingenuine self-effacement and denial of an acknowledged national literary heritage. The English language is not the only determining feature of the literature of the United States.
From an international perspective, one of the values of a new literary history composed mostly by scholars writing from within the United States is the expression the work will give to internal contemporary visions of the national literature. Indeed, it is only recently that we have developed the courage and intellectual perspectives for writing a self-conscious, critical analysis of the complex interdependencies between forms of verbal expression and the historical circumstances, national ideology, and politics that surround and permeate each text in variety of ways. The subordination of the study of the literature of the United States to become again a sub-branch of English literature would operate to halt the development of this national self-awareness in the writing of literary history. Surely this move would please traditionalists who have long held that only a few products of this inferior provincial writing are worthy of attention, as well as those disturbed by the cultural scrutiny of the new historicism.
In spite of all of our efforts to make this work a part of the continuing critical dialogue, there remains the problem that its very publication will signal to some a summing up, an authoritative finality. To counter this impression of closure, an authoritative finality. To counter this impression of closure, we might consider that for five years or so after the publication of the History, beginning perhaps two years after it appears, we in the field should publish an annual volume of essays which could serve as a forum for scholarly debate and discussion about and within the subject of literary history. Written by those who did not contribute to the volume as well as by some of those who did, these essays could present new factual material, interpretations that differ from those in the CLHUS, and material on writers or topics that need fuller
The Politics of Literary History (1987)
Author:
Elliott, Emory
Copyright:
1987
Book Type:
Other Resources
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