This book examines American literary texts whose portrayal of "American" identity involves the incorporation of a "foreign body" as the precondition for a comprehensive understanding of itself. This nexus of disconcerting textual dynamics arises precisely insofar as both citizen/subject and national identity depend upon a certain alterity, an "other" which constitutes the secondary term of a binary structure. "American" identity thus finds itself ironically con-fused and interwoven with another culture or another nation, double-crossed in the enactment of itself. Individual chapters are devoted to Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, Frederick Douglass, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mark Twain.
John Dolis is professor of English and American studies at Penn State University, Scranton.
AcknowledgmentsPre-lude: Performance CriticismOverture: Benjamin Franklin: A House is not a HomeFirst Movement: Washington Irving: The Cutting Edge of Gross AnatomySecond Movement: Frederick Douglass: Domestic Hardships and Capital GainsThird Movement: Louisa May Alcott: The Dividends of Foreign ExchangeFourth Movement: Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Citizen of Somewhere ElseFinale: Mark Twain: Beauty and the (B)eastBibliographyIndexAbout the Author
