Reconstructing American Literary History

by Sacvan Bercovitch

Reconstructing American Literary History offers a wide-ranging revaluation of American literature, from the Revolutionary period to the present, by outstanding young scholars who represent a new generation of American critics. Although they differ in their approaches and methods, all express a distinctive experience of discontinuity and disruption, and all are concerned with the problems of literary history. These essays succeed in using literary techniques to illuminate the dynamics of culture and historical analysis to open up literary interpretation. They provide fresh perspectives on questions of canon information, evaluation, and influence, "popular" vis-à-vis "classic" literature, the import of modernism and postmodernism, the connections between myth and ideology, American and European developments, rhetoric and social action. They offer persuasive new readings of particular texts. Taken as a whole, the volume delineates the major points of debate in American literary criticism, and suggests new directions in the study of American literature and culture.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Sacvan Bercovitch was a Canadian literary and cultural critic who spent most of his life teaching and writing in the United States. He received his B.A. at Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) in 1958, and his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University) in 1965. Bercovitch taught at Brandeis, the University of California-San Diego, Princeton, and at Columbia from 1970 to 1984. From 1984 until he retired in 2001 he taught at Harvard, where he held the Powell M. Cabot Professorship in American Literature.