More on A New Literary History of America

We've been following for a while the roll out of Greil Marcus' and Werner Sollors'  A New Literary History of America, along with the discussion of it as an innovation in how we think about literary history.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed now has a major discussion involving Priscilla Wald and Mark Bauerlein, entitled "Is this Literary History?"  The discussion goes well beyond that topic–to how this particular volume shapes (or in Bauerlein's mind ignores) well-established paths of literary history and even to the accuracy of certain entries.   Among Bauerlein's provocative statements are "Literary history in secondary classrooms is a fragmented and idiosyncratic endeavor, and A New Literary History of America is too."  And, in response to Priscilla Wald, "You single out a 'common memory' as a motivation for this literary history, but it seems to me that this 'carnival' of perspectives, voices, experiences, approaches, styles, opinions, and materials prevents precisely that outcome."

It will come as no surprise that I'm firmly in the Marcus/Sollors/Wald camp on this one.  Among other reasons, we've had a ton of other literary histories and it's time for something new, which stretches the boundaries of American literary history.  Even at the Harvard conference around the book, though, it was controversial.  Denise Xu's extensive article in the Harvard Crimson provides more reaction to the book.

Also, here's a link to Book TV's discussion with Sollors, Marcus, and Lindsay Waters, with comments from other luminaries like Lawrence Buell, Lizabeth Cohen, and Alex Keyssar.  BTW, Keyssar's course "Reasoning from History," on historical thinking and public policy looks absolutely fabulous.  Seems like applied legal history fits in well there.

One question: Francis Daniel Pastorius is not mentioned once in the back and forth, nor, so far as I can tell, in any other discussion of the book (or even in the introduction).  Is this because he's now become a traditional figure in American literary history?   Perhaps, therefore, he's not someone whose inclusion in A New Literary History is controversial?  He certainly fits with the multicultural theme of the volume (he was trained in law in Germany in the late seventeenth century, then came to Pennsylvania, where he was an important lawyer, judge, school teacher, and writer).   But amidst other new figures in ANLHOA–like Linda Lovelace and Chuck Berry–maybe he's too traditional to warrant comment.

I've said this before, but let me reemphasize that I'd like to see a new legal history built around a similar model.  In fact, it may be time to imagine a new legal history of America along these lines, of which cool and neglected people would be included.