A Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Aztlán to Amherst by Thomas Hallock (A Book Review)

Nathaniel R. Racine's review of A Road Course in Early American Literature: Travel and Teaching from Aztlán to Amherst by Thomas Hallock.

The Cambridge Companion to Early American Literature

This Companion covers American literary history from European colonization to the early republic. It provides a succinct introduction to the major themes and concepts in the field of early American literature, including new world migration, indigenous encounters, religious and secular histories, and the emergence of American literary genres. This book guides readers through important conceptual and theoretical issues, while also grounding these issues in close readings of key literary texts from early America.

Edwards’s Place and Importance in Anglo-American Literature

Long recognized as foundational contributions to British American belles lettres, the works of Jonathan Edwards influenced later writers and shaped narratives of American literary history. Edwards appears in the first descriptions of early American literature, and he continues to figure prominently in anthologies and histories of American writing today. This essay emphasizes major authors—from Harriet Beecher Stowe and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., to Robert Lowell, to Marilynne Robinson—who have acknowledged his influence. The nature of that influence varies, for every generation creates a distinctive version of Edwards. Advancing a liberal vision of Christianity, Stowe and Holmes reacted against Edwards’s alleged theological rigidity and spiritual cruelty. Lowell wrote poems reflecting the Edwardsean revival of the mid-twentieth century and bearing the imprint of the New Criticism. And in recent years, Robinson has staked a claim as a latter-day Edwardsean, embracing his intellectual legacy as an inspiration and resource for her celebrated novels.