Author: Kerkering, John D.
Title: The Poetics of National and Racial Identity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Description: Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003. orig.boards. 24x16xm, xiii,351 pp. Series: Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture ; [139]. Some rubbing. Cover corner bumped & creased. Good. ¶ Contents: The Poetics of National Identity: 1. 'We are five and forty': meter and national identity in Sir Walter Scott; 2. 'Our sacred union', ' our beloved Apalachia': nation and genius loci in Hawthorne and Simms; Part II. The Poetics of Racial Identity: 3. 'Of me and of mine': the music of racial identity 4. 'Blood will tell': literary effects and the diagnosis of racial instinct Conclusion: the conversation of identities. ["Examining the literary history of racial and national identity in nineteenth-century America, John Kerkering argues that writers such as DuBois, Hawthorne and Whitman used poetic effect to emphasize the distinctiveness of certain groups against a diffuse social landscape. Kerkering tells the story of how poetry helped define America as a nation before helping to define America into distinct racial categories. He concludes that through a shared reliance on formal literary effects, national and racial identities become related elements of a single literary history" - Publisher's description].

Keywords: American Literary History, United States, Nineteenth Century, Literature Poetics, Character Criticism, Nationalism, Nationalist Racial, Group Identity Race, Social Sociology