In this book Tony Tanner explores an array of key nineteenth and twentieth-century American writers. This makes his study an indispensable guide to students and scholars alike. He devotes the twelve essays contained in the present volume to Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Henry James, Howells, Fitzgerald, DeLillo and Pynchon. Teachers who are designing A Level or Access survey courses on nineteenth and twentieth century American literature and American Studies, as well as university and college lecturers, will find that the present book offers a valid introduction to the writing style of certain eminent American writers and the literary trends – transcendentalism, realism, modernism and postmodernism – that each one of them represents.

Emphasis is placed on the discussion of particular works with attention paid to the way language has been treated by each author for the construction of a distinctive American literary discourse. The present volume starts with a preface by Edward W. Said, who had been responsible for the posthumous collection and compilation of the essays to be included in this book, as well as with an introduction by Ian F. A. Bell under the title, “Tony Tanner on American means of writing and means of writing America”. In the critical evaluation provided of Tanner’s work, Bell indirectly exposes how America’s literary language came into being at a time when America was eager to present itself as a new nation independent from Europe.     

In each essay, Tanner highlights his close textual analyses with quotes coming from the primary sources under consideration and embellishes the discussion with references to key secondary sources. Whenever necessary, explanatory notes are also provided at the end of each essay. In addition, Tanner concentrates on characterization and the narrative tropes – metaphors, word plays, homophones – each author employs. In this way, Tanner enables his readers to appreciate not only the distinctive rhetoric that each one of the writers uses but also value the socio-cultural and political context within which their works were conceived and published. Some of the notions to be addressed are: slavery, democracy, identity, sexuality, materialism, history.

The information printed on the sources where the present essays had originally been published and the bibliographical data appearing at the end of each essay familiarize students of American literature with the scholarship of Tanner’s work as well as guide them through secondary criticism. An index is also available.