The Mediating Nation: Late American Realism, Globalization, and the Progressive State
By the early twentieth century, as Woodrow Wilson would later declare, the United States had become both the literal embodiment of all the earth's peoples and a nation representing all other nations and cultures through its ethnic and cultural diversity. This idea of connection with all peoples, Nathaniel Cadle argues, allowed American literary writers to circulate their work internationally, in turn promoting American literature and also the nation itself. Reexamining the relationship between Progressivism and literary realism, Cadle demonstrates that the narratives constructed by American writers asserted a more active role for the United States in world affairs and helped to shift global influence from Europe to North America.

From the novels of Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Abraham Cahan to the political and social writings of Woodrow Wilson and W. E. B. Du Bois, Cadle identifies a common global engagement through which realists and Progressives articulated a stronger and more active cultural, political, and social role for the United States.
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The Mediating Nation: Late American Realism, Globalization, and the Progressive State
By the early twentieth century, as Woodrow Wilson would later declare, the United States had become both the literal embodiment of all the earth's peoples and a nation representing all other nations and cultures through its ethnic and cultural diversity. This idea of connection with all peoples, Nathaniel Cadle argues, allowed American literary writers to circulate their work internationally, in turn promoting American literature and also the nation itself. Reexamining the relationship between Progressivism and literary realism, Cadle demonstrates that the narratives constructed by American writers asserted a more active role for the United States in world affairs and helped to shift global influence from Europe to North America.

From the novels of Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Abraham Cahan to the political and social writings of Woodrow Wilson and W. E. B. Du Bois, Cadle identifies a common global engagement through which realists and Progressives articulated a stronger and more active cultural, political, and social role for the United States.
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The Mediating Nation: Late American Realism, Globalization, and the Progressive State

The Mediating Nation: Late American Realism, Globalization, and the Progressive State

by Nathaniel Cadle
The Mediating Nation: Late American Realism, Globalization, and the Progressive State
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The Mediating Nation: Late American Realism, Globalization, and the Progressive State

The Mediating Nation: Late American Realism, Globalization, and the Progressive State

by Nathaniel Cadle

Overview

By the early twentieth century, as Woodrow Wilson would later declare, the United States had become both the literal embodiment of all the earth's peoples and a nation representing all other nations and cultures through its ethnic and cultural diversity. This idea of connection with all peoples, Nathaniel Cadle argues, allowed American literary writers to circulate their work internationally, in turn promoting American literature and also the nation itself. Reexamining the relationship between Progressivism and literary realism, Cadle demonstrates that the narratives constructed by American writers asserted a more active role for the United States in world affairs and helped to shift global influence from Europe to North America.

From the novels of Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Abraham Cahan to the political and social writings of Woodrow Wilson and W. E. B. Du Bois, Cadle identifies a common global engagement through which realists and Progressives articulated a stronger and more active cultural, political, and social role for the United States.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781469618456
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date: 10/01/2014
Pages: 266
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Nathaniel Cadle is assistant professor of English at Florida International University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Transnational Circulation in the Age of Realism and Progressivism 1

Chapter 1 From Cosmopolitanism to World-Salvation, The Transnational Imaginary and the Idea of the Progressive State 29

Chapter 2 Local Color, World Literature, and the Transnational Turn in William Dean Howells's Fiction and Criticism 58

Chapter 3 Improper Wealth Getting: Henry James, the Rise of Finance Capitalism, and the Emerging Global Cultural Economy 96

Chapter 4 Migration Systems and Literary Production: The Global Routes of Abraham Cahan and Knut Hamsun 127

Chapter 5 Freedom amongst Aliens: Jack London, Lafcadio Hearn, and the Alternative Modernity of Japan 161

Coda: Modernism, Multiculturalism, and the Legacy of the Mediating Nation 192

Notes 201

Bibliography 229

Index 247

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

An important contribution to literary scholarship on realist conceptions of globalization and the place of the United States in the world.—Gretchen Murphy, University of Texas at Austin

At once innovative and far-reaching in its claims, The Mediating Nation is a highly original, often brilliant intervention into settled understandings of the Progressive era. This broad-minded study employs history and literature to uncover alternative ways of thinking about the United States' attitude toward globalization in the second decade of the 'long American century.'—Don Pease, Dartmouth College

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