Teaching the Literatures of Early America

Carla Mulford, ed. Teaching Literatures of Early New York: Modern Language Association, 1999. xii + 402 pp. $40 cloth; $22 paper. Fulfilling its professional responsibility to prepare and showcase enlightened scholars, especially those freshly arriving in literary studies profession, Modern Language Association has established a series of resource books entitled Options for Teaching. Begun in 1975, series targets literary categories in areas of composition, film studies, oral traditions, and contemporary theory. The concentration on specialized literary topics furnishes instructors with opportunities for deeper, more diverse study in increasingly competitive arena of academic hiring, promotion, and tenure. The fifteenth volume of series highlights an area of American receiving renewed attention from literary critics. Contemporary critical approaches to and history addressing issues of race, class, and gender have prompted educators to revise their definitions, portrayals, and understanding of early years of North America after European settlement and that describes it. This reexamination of America's years entails challenging version of American history often depicted in traditional early-American studies. Consequently, instructors are expanding, replacing, supplementing longstanding mythologies embedded in this that traces development of United States, its relationship to other North American countries, and its interaction with indigenous peoples and with non-English colonists. For decades, educators have struggled with defining words literature and America. These two terms become even more enigmatic when they converge in a course that explores body of recognized as documenting creation of a nation. Students have been overeducated in that records explorations of Columbus, establishment of Puritans at Plymouth Plantation, and subsequent colonization of uncivilized, barbarous Indians that led to emergence of founding fathers. The recent confirmation, however, of Thomas Jefferson's romantic involvement with his slave Sally Hemmings attests that formation of United States was not simple, linear progression from discovery to nationhood often presented in American literature. These documented interactions also counter projection of a superior European race that was responsible for elevating subhuman ideas and customs of native North Americans. Confronting these complex exchanges in colonial culture, literary scholars are now exploring works that span spectrum of North American colonial writing. While editor Carla Mulford admits that Teaching Literature of Early America does not reflect the full range of colonial writing, she asserts that text expands present scope, definitions, and categories of early American literature. For example, collection includes territory of Caribbean islands and presentday Canada. In addition, it addresses literary genres beyond traditional classifications of poetry, fiction, and autobiography. Therefore, collection's portrayal of early America is more representative of early American perioda period when society lacked rigid geographical boundaries, literary classifications, and cultural divisions facilitated by formation of United States of This collection combats presentism by supplying instructors with methods and resources required to expose students to abundant quantity of early American and to situate them in multifaceted culture of colonial times. A number of literary educators have been introducing students to various literary works represented by Jesuit captivity narratives, female Spanish explorers, Native American narrative forms, and also to concept of social role of saloons and clubs in British colonies. …

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