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 | | American Literature, Volume I (Penguin Academics Series) (Penguin Academics) by William E. Cain ISBN-10: 9780321116239 ISBN-10: 0-321-11623-2 ISBN-13: 9780321116239 ISBN-13: 978-0-321-11623-9 Paperback 2004-02-19 Longman Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description A concise but complete introduction to American Literature. Brief introductions, headnotes, and a wide range of selections provide a compact yet affordable introduction to American Literature. Those interested in American Literature. | ||
Reviews | ||
Sufficient, but limited. This was the main assigned text for my Early American Literature course in college. I think the best thing that can be said about it is that it is concise and compact, one of my lightest texts that semester, which is a good selling point for some people. After all, most literature course syllabi don't assign the entire anthology, and even this one contains more material than can easily be discussed in one semester. A minor quibble I have is with the footnotes--they seem to be geared more towards a high school than a college audience. While Cain does a good job of identifying the source of allusions, he also feels the need to define terms such as "score" (as in "four score and seven years") and "Civil War," while occasionally neglecting to engage deeper theoretical issues. My major concern, however, is that this edition's brevity means that it cuts out material that, arguably, ought to have been included. The most glaring omission, if I counted right: of the 40 writers whose work is represented, only one of them--Thomas Jefferson--was a Southerner. This is particularly disturbing given the time period covered by the book--Columbus to the Civil War. The editor Cain writes, in one of his "Letters to the Reader," that "Southern slaveholders, statesmen, clergymen, professors, and men of letters produced an enormous body of passionate, detailed, perversely complicated proslavery literature...in countless speeches, essays, monographs...many talented, well-educated Southerners labored to prove the rightness of slavery." Why is none of this literature presented in the anthology? I am, of course, not in favor of slavery. But that is the very point. There is no question of slavery today; while racism still exists, America is not in the least danger of returning to slaveholding. The question "Why did slavery continue so long in America, the country of freedom?" is a real and important mystery for modern students of literature and history. It is a mystery with a complex solution and far-reaching implications. But the modern student, presented only with one side of the issue--the abolitionists' side, the slaves' and freed slaves' side, the victors' side--will never get any farther than simplistic (though frequently true) accusations of hatred and greed. Let anthologies of American literature reflect the ideals of American democracy: let all voices be heard. Truth, if it is strong enough, will survive; in the meantime, our students may learn discernment. | ||