Promotional Information

Master Plots is an intelligent and thoughtful study of the racial aspects of identity raised by formative American writers like Royall Tyler, Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, and Frederick Douglass. Addressing issues such as the alien and naturalization laws, and the formation of a new nation in response to issues such as slavery and the Native American, it will appeal to scholars of American literature, American studies, and history, and should be a recommended book for graduate courses in the field. -- Shirley Samuels, Cornell University

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Chapter 1. The History of White Negroes
Chapter 2. The Prodigal in Chains
Chapter 3. Edgar Huntly's Savage Awakening
Chapter 4. Cooper's Vanishing American Act
Chapter 5. Poe's "Incredible Adventures and Discoveries Still Farther South"
Chapter 6. Douglass and the Rewriting of American Race
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Jared Gardner is an assistant professor of English at Ohio State University.

Reviews

Engaging and intriguing. -- Susan Kurjiaka American Literature This insightful volume complements the numerous critical studies that have shown how U.S. authors before the Civil War wished to create a literature different from European models. Gardner persuasively argues that many writers attempted to invent a national identity by defining 'American' in racial terms. Choice