American Literary Emergence as a Postcolonial Phenomenon

As the first colony to win independence, America has a history that Americans have liked to offer as a prototype for other new nations, yet which by the same token might profitably be studied by Americans themselves in light of later cases. In the field of American literary history, however, such a retrospective rereading has rarely been tried. This essay attempts precisely that: to imagine the extent to which the emergence of a flourishing national literature during the socalled Renaissance period of the mid-nineteenth century can be brought into focus through the lens of more recent postcolonial literatures. This is a project I have come to as an Americanist by training who has since turned to studying Anglophone writing on a more global scale. Although this body of writing and the critical commentary that has arisen to frame it interest me mainly for their own sake, as an Americanist I have also found that they have caused me to rethink what I thought I already knew. If my approach seems strange, as I hope it will, the reasons should be clear. Some formidable barriers inhibit Ameri-