The Colonial Moment

ISBN-13: 9780875803258 / Angielski / Twarda / 2004 / 246 str.

Jeffrey W. Westover

Opis

Explorers, colonists, native dwellers - all of these people played a role in early American settlement, and the legacy they left was a turbulent one. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, as the United States asserted itself as a world power, poets began to revisit this legacy and to create their own interpretations of national history. In The Colonial Moment, Jeffrey Westover shows how five major poets - Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Hart Crane, and Langston Hughes - drew from national conflicts to assess America's new role as leader of an empire. Sensitive to the nation's memory of colonial brutality, these poets mingled their pride in America with moral protest against racism.Some identified a dark side to the nation's history, particularly in the contrast between white pioneers and Native Americans, that haunted their otherwise confident celebrations of patriotism.