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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
‘What is American about American Literature?’ is a question that is repeatedly answered too easily. A frequently offered solution is the claim that the dominant form of the nineteenth-century American novel is the Romance. Joel Porte, for example, confidently entitles his book on Cooper, Poe, Hawdiorne, Melville, and James The Romance in America. Porte begins his study with a sweeping assertion that the battle is over, the problem solved:
Thanks to a series of major critical studies that have appeared in the past decade and a half, it no longer seems necessary to argue for the importance of romance as a nineteenth century American genre. Students of American literature – notably Richard Chase – have provided a solid theoretical basis for establishing that the rise and growth of fiction in this country is dominated by our authors' conscious adherence to a tradition of non-realistic romance sharply at variance with the broadly novelistic mainstream of English writing. When there has been disagreement among recent critics as to the contours of American fiction, it has usually disputed, not the existence per se of a romance tradition, but rather the question of which authors, themes, and stylistic strategies deserve to be placed with certainty at the heart of that tradition.
1 Porte, J., The Romance in America (Connecticut, 1969), p. ixGoogle Scholar. The major critical studies to which Porte refers are: Feidelson, C.'s Symbolism and American LiteratureGoogle Scholar, Lewis, R. W. B.'s The American AdamGoogle Scholar, Chase, R.'s The American Novel and Its TraditionGoogle Scholar, Fiedler, L.'s Love and Death in the American NovelGoogle Scholar, and Hoffman, D.'s Form and Fable in American Fiction.Google Scholar It is perhaps worth noting the terms which Porte regards as the crucial descriptions: ‘conventional, or archetypical, figures, … symbol, parable, dream and fantasy.’
2 Chase, R., The American Novel and Its Tradition (New York, 1957), pp. ix, 12.Google Scholar
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17 ‘On the human imagination events produce the effects of time. Thus, he who has traveled far and seen much is apt to fancy that he has lived long, and the history that most abounds in important incidents soonest assumes the aspect of antiquity. In no other way can we account for the venerable air that is already gathering around American annals.’ Cooper, J. F., The Deerslayer (Signet, New York, 1963), p. 9.Google Scholar
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