Constituting �Americanness� A History of the Concept and Its Representations in Antebellum American Literature

This work in cultural history and literary criticism suggests a fresh and fruitful approach to the old notion of Americanness.Following Reinhart Koselleck�s Begriffsgeschichte, the author proposes that Americanness is not an ordinary word, but a concept with a historically specific semantic field. In the three decades before the Civil War, Americanness was constituted at the intersection of several concepts, in different stages of their respective histories; among these, nation, representation, individualism, sympathy, race, and womanhood. By tracing the representations of these concepts in literary texts of the antebellum era and investigating their overlapping with the rhetoric of national identification, this study uncovers some of the meaning of Americanness in that period. Additional ISBNs 3631657692, 3653051177, 9783631657690, 9783653051179Constituting �Americanness�: A History of the Concept and Its Representations in Antebellum American Literature 1st Edition is written by Iulian Cananau and published by Peter Lang Gmb H, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften. ISBNs for Constituting �Americanness� are 9783653975444, 3653975441 and the print ISBNs are 9783631657690, 3631657692. Additional ISBNs include 3631657692, 3653051177, 9783631657690, 9783653051179.