Fabrication of American Literature
Literary histories typically celebrate the antebellum period as marking the triumphant emergence of American literature. But the period''s readers and writers tell a different story: they derided literature as a fraud, an imposture, and a humbug, and they likened it to inflated currency, land bubbles, and quack medicine.
Excavating a rich archive of magazine fiction, verse satires, comic almanacs, ...
Literary histories typically celebrate the antebellum period as marking the triumphant emergence of American literature. But the period''s readers and writers tell a different story: they derided literature as a fraud, an imposture, and a humbug, and they likened it to inflated currency, land bubbles, and quack medicine.
Excavating a rich archive of magazine fiction, verse satires, comic almanacs, ...
