Immigration, Ethnicity, and Class in American Writing, 1830-1860

By Leonardo Buonomo

Subjects: Nationalism in literature, Soziale Klasse, Race in literature, Nationalcharakter, National characteristics, american, Group identity in literature, Ethnische Identität, Nationalism and literature, Ethnicity in literature, National characteristics, American, in literature, Literatur, Einwanderung, History and criticism, American literature, History, Literature and society, American literature, history and criticism, 19th century, Immigrants in literature, Social classes in literature

Description: This book examines the close relationship between the portrayal of foreigners and the delineation of culture and identity in antebellum American writing. Both literary and historical in its approach, this study shows how, in a period marked by extensive immigration, heated debates on national and racial traits, during a flowering in American letters, encouraged responses from American authors to outsiders that not only contain precious insights into nineteenth-century America’s self-construction but also serve to illuminate our own time’s multicultural societies. The authors under consideration are alternately canonical (Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville), recently rediscovered (Kirkland), or simply neglected (Arthur). The texts analyzed cover such different genres as diaries, letters, newspapers, manuals, novels, stories, and poems.