Colored Worlds. American Literature in Search of National Identity

«The Worlds of Color»: The Quest for National Identity in American Literature The problem under investigation In the research is the cultural identity quest and assertion in the course of emergence and evolution of the American literary tradition. The transformation of the European background shared by non-European racial and ethnic groups in the New World is in the focus of attention. The key moments of the process as reflected in literary texts are under consideration: the conversion of Africans and Native Americans, the nascence of the double consciousness, the debates over separatism, assimilation and integration, the controversy between the patriotic and eurocentrist viewpoints, the making of new and re-making of old concepts (the primitive, the New World utopia, the American Eden, etc.) integrating the “worlds of color” in multicultural American kaleidoscope.

The book is addressed to the university and college professors, students, scholars in American literature, culture and history.