The Global Remapping of American Literature. Princeton

Paul Giles. The Global Remapping of American Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2010. Pp. 340. US$45.00. Paul Giles' The Global Remapping of American Literature is an ambitious book that may well be indispensable for scholars interested in recent transnational turn in U.S. literary studies--which is to say, any scholars interested in U.S. literary studies. The book proposes nothing less than a complete, new framework for American literary history--a framework consistent with a transnational perspective. Giles argues that borders of U.S. literature, like borders of nation, were only solidified between 1865 and 1980 and that at other times national literature, like national geography, was more amorphous. During colonial and early years of republic, country's more amorphous territorial framework engendered parallel uncertainties about status and authority of American discourse, he argues. Similarly, since about 1981, multidimensional effects of globalization have reconfigured premises of U.S. national identity in relation to a wider sphere. The identification of American literature with U.S. national territory was an equation confined to national period (1). Giles contests standard American literary histories that seek to project national identity back to earliest days of colonization and that construct a coherent national culture throughout nation's history. Unlike standard U.S. literary histories that recognize more periods, Giles identifies only three periods of American literature: transnational era (early settlement-1865), national era (1865-1980), and globalized era (1981--present). Separate chapters deal with each of periods, i.e., all of U.S. literary history--an impressive feat at a time when few scholars claim command over such a broad sweep of U.S. literature (or any literary field). Chapter one explores colonial texts by James Cook, Cotton Mather, William Byrd, Phillis Wheatley, and others in context of British Augustan literature, arguing that the cultural traditions of Britain and America from 1640 onward were much more closely intertwined than has usually been (32). The second chapter proposes that Republican literature (Emerson, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Melville) might be characterized as Medieval, given its intense preoccupation with history, its anti-industrial spirit, its nostalgia, and its Gothicism. Throughout both early chapters, Giles includes geographical maps that reveal instability of U.S. national borders; illustrations provide compelling support for his claim that nation's literature and culture were equally unstable and porous. Later chapters address transnational sensibilities of contemporary writers like David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers. These chapters also examine specific regions of U.S.--the South and Pacific Northwest--in order to further destabilize nation's spatial map. Giles examines South in relation to Caribbean and Atlantic slave trade: he puts Frederick Douglass in conversation with William Simms (a Southern writer who imagined a broad Caribbean slave-holding region encompassing American South); he places Cuban author Jose Marti in conversation with U.S. imperial discourse on Cuba; and he explores ways Zora Neale Hurston and Elizabeth Bishop were influenced by Latin American culture. On West Coast, Giles discusses influence of Buddhism and Eastern philosophy on Gary Snyder as well as relationship between American and Canadian cultures in works of William Gibson and Douglas Coupland. It is telling that Giles devotes only one chapter out of six to nationalist period, which encompasses both realism and modernism. …