American World Literature: An Introduction

"...and what this book tries to do - is elaborating a new procedure, a method to disentangle a complex entity into simpler units which enhance comprehension without giving anything for granted. The pursue of such aim makes American World Literature a particularly rich book, ideal for students with a background in literature and scholars wishing to keep an account of the major historical and critical issues of the subject at hand." - Serena Demichelis for Iperstoria, Issue 14 - Fall/Winter 2019

Paul Giles is Challis Professor of English at the University of Sydney, Australia. He was previously Professor of American Literature at the University of Oxford, University Lecturer in American Literature at Cambridge, and President of the International American Studies Association.

Acknowledgments vi 1 The Theory of American World Literature 1 References 25 2 Early American Literature in the World 30 2.1 Contact Zones and Extended Scales 30 2.2 The Classical Counternarrative 41 2.3 The Early American Novel's Transatlantic Axis 51 2.4 Thomas Paine and Universal Order 63 References 69 3 National/Global: The Framing of Nineteenth-Century American Literature 75 3.1 National Agendas and Transnational Dialogues 75 3.2 Slavery's Global Compass 92 3.3 Planetary Space and Intellectual Distance 113 References 119 4 The Worlds of American Modernism 126 4.1 The American Novel and the Great War 126 4.2 The Esthetics of Contradiction 146 4.3 American Studies and World Literature: The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath 156 References 165 5 Postmodernism, Globalization, and US Literary Culture 171 5.1 The Politics of Postmodernism 171 5.2 Styles of Globalization 176 5.3 Disorientation and Reorientation: Kincaid, Morrison, Kingston 193 References 202 Index 208