Bøker av Jr. McWilliams

This book considers the portrayal of the American national character in the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. It examines Hawthorne's abiding concern with the development of New England from colony to province to republic, and analyses Melville's changing evocation of 'the new American', and the difficulties he faced in sustaining his heady nationalistic faith.

John McWilliams's 1990 book was the first thorough account of the many attempts to fashion an epic literature (the anxiously anticipated 'American Epic') from a wide range of potentially heroic New World subjects.