The Routledge Introduction to the American Novel provides a comprehensive and engaging guide to this cornerstone literary genre, reframing our understanding of the American novel and its evolving traditions. This volume aims to engage productive classroom discussion, including:
- What differentiates the American novel from its European predecessors and traditions from other parts of the world?
- How have the related myths of the American Dream and the Great American Novel affected understanding of the tradition over time?
- How do American novels by or about women, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and members of lower social classes challenge the American cultural monomyth?
- How do experimental novels and eco-conscious novels alter the American novel tradition?
Rethinking historical trends and debates surrounding the American novel, this text delivers a persuasive case for why it’s important to reevaluate the American novelistic tradition. The Routledge Introduction to the American Novel offers a much-needed update to the history and future of this literary form.
Introduction
1. The Long, Annoying Shadow of Europe and the Search for Greatness
2. The American Dream: A Myth of Upward Mobility and Middle-Class Happiness
3. Domestic Discontentment: The Marriage Plot Anti-Dream
4. “Not a Story to Pass On”: Slavery and the American Novel
5. Class, Race, and the Anti-Dream Narrative
6. Multiethnic America
7. Old (and New) Weird America: Experimentation and Voices from the Margins
8. Our Fragile Earth: Eco-Consciousness and the American Novel
Biography
D. Quentin Miller (Ph.D. in English, University of Connecticut) is Professor of English at Suffolk University, where he teaches courses on American literature, African American literature, and fiction writing. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of more than a dozen books, most recently James Baldwin in Context, The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature (13th edition), and African American Literature in Transition, 1980–1990.
