Reconstructing American Literary History offers a wide-ranging revaluation of American literature, from the Revolutionary period to the present, by outstanding young scholars who represent a new generation of American critics. Although they differ in their approaches and methods, all express a distinctive experience of discontinuity and disruption, and all are concerned with the problems of literary history. These essays succeed in using literary techniques to illuminate the dynamics of culture and historical analysis to open up literary interpretation. They provide fresh perspectives on questions of canon information, evaluation, and influence, "popular" vis-à-vis "classic" literature, the import of modernism and postmodernism, the connections between myth and ideology, American and European developments, rhetoric and social action. They offer persuasive new readings of particular texts. Taken as a whole, the volume delineates the major points of debate in American literary criticism, and suggests new directions in the study of American literature and culture.