Sacvan Bercovitch, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature

Sacvan Bercovitch’s eight-volume Cambridge History of American Literature is now complete: this is volume three, but the last in print. Originally conceived in the early nineties, the project has been the work of “a new generation of Americanists who have redrawn the boundaries of the field.” The use of “Americanist” here signals the manner in which those boundaries have been “redrawn.” Clearly, the History is not meant to be the work of stuffy (old) professors of literature who focus narrowl...