Overview
This is a thorough account of the many attempts during the 18th and 19th centuries to fashion a distinctly American epic literature from a wide range of potentially heroic New World subjects. McWilliams considers the cultural, political, and literary implications of adapting Enlightenment views of republican progress to a genre that had traditionally celebrated the greatness of warriors. He shows how and why the epic in America had to be transformed from imitative narrative poetry into the new genres of prose history (Irving, Prescott, Parkman), fictional romance (Cooper, Melville), and free verse (Whitman).
- | Author: John P., Jr. McWilliams
- | Publisher: Cambridge University Press
- | Publication Date: Nov 24, 1989
- | Number of Pages: 296 pages
- | Binding: Hardback or Cased Book
- | ISBN-10: 0521373220
- | ISBN-13: 9780521373227
