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Epic literature, American --- Literature and history --- National characteristics, American, in literature. --- History and criticism. --- History --- American epic literature --- History and literature --- History and poetry --- Poetry and history --- American literature --- Epic literature [American ] --- History and criticism --- United States --- 18th century --- 19th century --- National characteristics [American ] in literature --- Cooper, James Fenimore --- Criticism and interpretation --- Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth --- Melville, Herman

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John McWilliams's 1990 book was the first thorough account of the many attempts to fashion an epic literature (the anxiously anticipated 'American Epic') from a wide range of potentially heroic New World subjects. At the outset, McWilliams considers the many problems - cultural, political and literary' - of adapting Enlightenment views of republican progress to a genre that had traditionally celebrated the greatness of warriors. After a survey of the many epic poems written during and after the American Revolution, McWilliams shows how and why the epic had to be transformed from imitative narrative poetry into the new, open genres of prose history (Irving, Prescott and Parkman), fictional romance (Cooper and Melville) and free verse (Whitman). Believing that reviews are an important and slighted agent of literary change, McWilliams has written his book in the form of chronological literary history. His book, however, is no march of dates within tired categories. The American Epic suggests that imaginative writers of the Romantic era were in fact far less proscriptive about the boundaries of literary genre than many a twentieth-century writer and scholar.

Poetry --- Fiction --- American literature --- anno 1800-1899 --- anno 1700-1799 --- Epic literature [American ] --- History and criticism --- Revolutionary period, 1775-1783 --- 1783-1850 --- Barlow, Joel --- Criticism and interpretation --- Cooper, James Fenimore --- Dwight, Timothy --- Melville, Herman --- Prescott, William Hickling --- Simms, William Gilmore --- Trumbull, John --- Whitman, Walt --- Irving, Washington --- Parkman, Francis --- Paulding, James Kirke --- Arts and Humanities --- Literature --- Epic literature, American --- American epic literature --- History and criticism. --- United States --- Intellectual life

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American national characteristics in literature --- Amerikaans volkskarakter in de literatuur --- Caractéristiques nationales américaines dans la littérature --- National characteristics [American ] in literature --- Volkskarakter [Amerikaans ] in de literatuur --- Epic literature, American --- American fiction --- National characteristics, American, in literature. --- Literature and history --- History and criticism. --- History --- Updike, John. --- Roth, Philip. --- DeLillo, Don. --- United States --- In literature. --- National characteristics, American, in literature --- American epic literature --- American literature --- History and criticism --- Roth, Philip --- DeLillo, Don --- Updike, John --- Epic literature [American ] --- 20th century --- In literature --- Littérature américaine --- Caractère national américain --- États-Unis --- 20e siècle --- Histoire et critique --- Dans la littérature