Patrick Colm Hogan

Broschiertes Buch

American Literature and American Identity

A Cognitive Cultural Study From the Revolution Through the Civil War

Beschreibung

American Literature and American Identity addresses the crucial issue of identity formation, especially national identity, in influential works of American literature. Patrick Colm Hogan uses techniques of cognitive and affective science to examine the complex and often highly ambivalent treatment of American identity in works by Melville, Cooper, Sedgwick, Apess, Stowe, Jacobs, Douglass, Hawthorne, Poe, and Judith Sargeant Murray. Hogan focuses on the issue of how authors imagined American identity-specifically, as universal, democratic egalitarianism-in the face of the nation's clear and often brutal inequalities of race and sex. In the course of this study, Hogan advances our understanding of nationalism in general, American identity in particular, and the widely read literary works he examines.

Autor

Patrick Colm Hogan is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Department of English and the Program in Cognitive Science at the University of Connecticut, USA.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Routledge / Taylor & Francis
• Seitenzahl: 216
• Erscheinungstermin: 10. Juni 2020
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 234mm x 156mm x 12mm
• Gewicht: 335g
• ISBN-13: 9780367473792
• ISBN-10: 0367473798
• Artikelnr.: 69893381

Rezensionen

"Employing the findings of contemporary narratology and cognitive science to explain the psycho-social dynamics of national identity, this book analyzes how American literature since the Civil War has represented, and also intervened in, the efforts to define and salvage an American identity plagued by contradictions between its radically egalitarian core and its often brutally exclusionary dynamics that marginalize certain racial, gender, and sexual identities. In the current (post?)Trump era of rampant American nativism, systemic racism, white supremacism, and toxic masculinism, it is hard to imagine a more timely and important work of literary analysis. More generally, the conceptual tools provided by this book make it a valuable

resource for understanding the varying ways in which different narrative prototypes contribute to the construction and reconstruction of any social identity." Mark Bracher, Director, Neurocognitive Research Program for the Advancement of the Humanities, Kent State University

"Exhaustively researched, American Literature and American Identity is a smart and timely book that draws on cognitive and affective studies as tools for understanding the ways in which understandings of national identity are imbricated into narrative structure. In his sensitive reading of widely read literary works, Hogan demonstrates how authors promoted a vision of American identity as universal and egalitarian in spite of the nation's glaring inequalities. This is an important book that comes at a critical time in American history, one in which America's past sins and future hopes are falling under increased public scrutiny." Stella Setka, West Los Angeles College