Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Preface vii
4. New Americanists: Revisionist Interventions into the Canon 1
5. The Res Publica of Letters 38
6. The Desublimation of Romance
7. The Rationale for "The American Romance" 71
8. Scarcity, Subjectivity, and Emerson 83
9. Hearing Narrative Voices in Melville's Pierre 100
10. The Rhetorical Use and Abuse of Fiction: Eating Books in Late Nineteenth-Century America 133
11. Maternal Discourse and the Romance of Self-Possession 1 158
12. The New Historicist Return of the Repressed Context
13. Realism, Ideology, and the Novel in America (18861896): Changing Perspectives in the Work of Mark Twain, W. D. Howells, and Henry James 189
14. American Literature and the New Historicism: The Example of Frederick Douglass 211
15. "Ours by the Law of Nature": Romance and Independents on Mark Twain's River 243
16. Cataloging the Creatures of the Deep: "Billy Budd, Sailor" and the Rise of Sociology 272
17. Violence, Revolution, and the Cost of Freedom: John Brown and W. E. B. DuBois 305
18. Contributors 331
19. Index 333