Predicting the Past: The Paradoxes of American Literary History

About the Book

Drawing from the social theories of Niklas Luhmann and Mary Douglas, Predicting the Past advocates a reflexive understanding of the paradoxical institutional dynamic of American literary history as a professional discipline and field of study. Contrary to most disciplinary accounts, Michael Boyden resists the utopian impulse to offer supposedly definitive solutions for the legitimation crises besetting American literature studies by "going beyond" its inherited racist, classist, and sexist underpinnings. Approaching the existence of the American literary tradition as a typically modern problem generating diverse but functionally equivalent solutions, Boyden argues how its peculiarity does not, as is often supposed, reside in its restrictive exclusivity but rather in its massive inclusivity, which drives it to constantly revert to a self-negating "beyond" perspective. Predicting the Past covers a broad range of literary histories and reference works, from Rufus Griswold's 1847 Prose Writers of America to Sacvan Bercovitch's monumental Cambridge History of American Literature. Throughout, Boyden focuses on particular themes and topics illustrating the self-induced complexity of American literary history, such as the early "Anglocentric" roots theories of American literature; the debate on contemporary authors in the age of naturalism; the plurilingual ethnocentrism of the pioneer Americanists of the mid-twentieth century; and the genealogical misrepresentation of founding figures such as Jonathan Edwards, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Lowell.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
• A Forensic Approach to American Literary History
• Revisiting the “End” of American Literature
• Outline of the Chapters

The “Pre-History” of American Literat ure: Early Prospects (1850-1910)
• The Future of an Illusion
• Nationalizing the Past
• The Rhetoric of Race
• Teaching and Preaching
• Why Textbooks (Never) Lie
• The Taboo on Provincialism

Live and Let Live: Debati ng Contemporary Literat ure (1890-1930)
• Explaining Antiquarianism
• The Temptations of the Flesh
• Culture and Scholarship
• Explaining Anti-Antiquarianism
• Historians of the Present
• Facts and Factors

The Uses of Language: Literary Polyvocality and Ethnic Continuity (1880-1950)
• Legends about Language in the U.S.
• Dequarantining “American” Languages
• The Continuation of “Anglocentrism continued”
• The Languages of P(l)ur(al)ism
• The Limits of Cosmopolitanism
• America as a “Unipolar” Culture?

Precursors and Exemplars: Genealogies in American Literary History
• The Priority of Jonathan Edwards
• Multiple Awakenings
• The Dickinson Myth
• How Dickinson Became an Intolerable Woman Author
• The (Not So) Personal Voice: The Confessional Poets
• The Matthew Effect

Conclusion: Nothing Realy Ends

About the Author :
Michael Boyden is Assistant Professor of American Literature and Culture at the Department of Translation Studies of University College Ghent, Belgium.

Review :
"In this insightful and accessible analysis, Michael Boyden reveals the complex ways U.S. literary historians have constructed narratives of national identity and culture that conceal crucial elements of the story. This is an engaging, groundbreaking study of an influential historical form."-Emory Elliott, General Editor, Columbia Literary History of the United States "Michael Boyden argues that American literary history constitutes a literary technology for the construction of a past that answers the needs of the present. Boyden's critical genealogy of the discipline of American literary history promises to become a benchmark text."-Donald A. Pease. Dartmouth College "A member of the new generation of international Americanists deeply familiar with America's institutions, myths, and imaginaries, Boyden ably illustrates the productive possibilities of practicing American Studies as a non-American Americanist."-Djelal Kadir, Founding President, International American Studies Association "A brilliant account of how American literature has systematically internalized the conception of utopian alternatives, so that the projected future of the subject is tied inexorably to its past. This book is a major theoretical contribution to the internationalization of the field."-Paul Giles, Oxford University