| The Power of Historical Knowledge: Narrating the Past in Hawthorne, James, and Dreiser Subjects: Historical fiction American -- History and criticism; Narration (Rhetoric); Hawthorne Nathaniel 1804–1864. House of the seven gables; James Henry 1843–1916. Bostonians; James Henry 1843–1916. Wings of the dove; Dreiser Theodore 1871–1945. America; In this provocative study, Susan Mizruchi argues that the act of writing history is the key to the political concerns of American novelists. Using nineteenth-century theories of history as well as recent narratological models, she examines reconstructions of the past in The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Bostonians (1886), The Wings of the Dove (1902), and An American Tragedy (1925). Her special focus allows us to see that the efforts (on the part of characters and narrators alike) to reshape the past reveal both anxieties about the self and larger struggles for political power. |