1st Edition

Transnationalism and American Literature Literary Translation 1773–1892

By Colleen G. Boggs Copyright 2007
    212 Pages
    by Routledge

    212 Pages
    by Routledge

    What is transnationalism and how does it affect American literature?

    This book examines nineteenth century contexts of transnationalism, translation and American literature. The discussion of transnationalism largely revolves around the question of what role nationalism plays in the spaces and temporalities of the transatlantic. Boggs demonstrates that the assumption that American literature has become transnational only recently – that there is such a thing as an "era" of transnationalism – marks a blindness to the intrinsic transatlanticism of American literature.

    Introduction Mulitlingual Transnationalisms: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charlotte Forten Grimke 1. Transatlantic Education: Phyllis Wheatley's Neoclassicism 2. The Blanced Atlantic: James Fenimore Cooper's Neutral Ground 3. American World Literature: Margaret Fuller 4. Literary Exemplarity: Walt Whitman's Specimens 5. Intellectual Property: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Copyright

    Biography

    Colleen G. Boggs is Associate Professor of English and Women and Gender Studies at Dartmouth College, USA.

    'Colleen Boggs wastes no words; every page provokes reflection and re-pays re-reading…This is critical comparison at its best: compact, challenging and illuminating.’ - Susan Manning, The University of Edinburgh, UK

    'A major contribution to the new, postnational American Studies: sophisticated and original.' - Dr. Jess Edwards, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

    'In this book, Colleen Glenney Boggs makes a startlingly powerful and original case…While other critics consider transnationalism primarily as a spatial or political phenomenon, Glenney Boggs focuses our attention on evidence of linguistic variety in the pages of American works themselves: a significant angle so far overlooked by those who habitually equate national print culture with monolingualism. She persuasively argues that American texts have always been multilingual and that 'the practice of linguistic translation' actually helped rather than hindered American authors in their quest for artistic innovation.' - Leslie Eckel, "The Comparatist"