Master Plots: Race and the Founding of an American Literature, 1787-1845

by Jared Gardner

Overview

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title

While it is well known that American writers of the early national period were preoccupied with differentiating their work from European models, Jared Gardner argues that the national literature of the United States was equally motivated by the desire to differentiate white Americans from blacks and Indians. Early American writers were drawn to fantasies of an "American race," and an American literature came to be defined not only by its desire for cultural uniqueness but also by its defense of racial purity. Gardner follows the shifts in American narrative's engagement with race, from Royall Tyler's Algerine Captive through the novels of Brockden Brown and Cooper, to Poe's tales and Douglass's autobiographies, narratives that differently sought to rewrite the intersections of racial and national identity the first generation had plotted.

The larger story Master Plots describes is how the racial language of "slavery" and "savagery" helped nationalist writers plot a unique identity for the new nation and the cost this "master plot" exacted when the empty rhetoric of one generation confronted the historical facts of slavery and Native American Removal in the next. The question of what it meant to be an American had lost none of its severity and the desire for an answer none of its urgency. As early nationalist writers wrestled with the question, they proved how hard a question it is to answer and how great are the dangers in scripting its answers too easily.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801865381
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	12/29/2000
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.57(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jared Gardner is an assistant professor of English at Ohio State University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Chapter 1. The History of White Negroes
Chapter 2. The Prodigal in Chains
Chapter 3. Edgar Huntly's Savage Awakening
Chapter 4. Cooper's Vanishing American Act
Chapter 5. Poe's "Incredible Adventures and Discoveries Still Farther South"
Chapter 6. Douglass and the Rewriting of American Race
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Shirley Samuels

Master Plots is an intelligent and thoughtful study of the racial aspects of identity raised by formative American writers like Royall Tyler, Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, and Frederick Douglass. Addressing issues such as the alien and naturalization laws, and the formation of a new nation in response to issues such as slavery and the Native American, it will appeal to scholars of American literature, American studies, and history, and should be a recommended book for graduate courses in the field.

— Shirley Samuels, Cornell University

From the Publisher

Master Plots is an intelligent and thoughtful study of the racial aspects of identity raised by formative American writers like Royall Tyler, Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, and Frederick Douglass. Addressing issues such as the alien and naturalization laws, and the formation of a new nation in response to issues such as slavery and the Native American, it will appeal to scholars of American literature, American studies, and history, and should be a recommended book for graduate courses in the field.
—Shirley Samuels, Cornell University

Editorial Reviews

Engaging and intriguing.
—Susan Kurjiaka, American Literature

This insightful volume complements the numerous critical studies that have shown how U.S. authors before the Civil War wished to create a literature different from European models. Gardner persuasively argues that many writers attempted to invent a national identity by defining 'American' in racial terms.
—Choice

From the Publisher

This insightful volume complements the numerous critical studies that have shown how U.S. authors before the Civil War wished to create a literature different from European models. Gardner persuasively argues that many writers attempted to invent a national identity by defining 'American' in racial terms.

Choice

Engaging and intriguing.

American Literature - Susan Kurjiaka

Engaging and intriguing.

— Susan Kurjiaka

American Literature