Creating America

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the creation of the American identity was not a fluid, linear process but rather a generational process. The paper points out that this process is reflected in the literature, which shows how the first generation of colonists and later new immigrants long for home, but slowly, themes and traditions emerge that express a belief that the old nation, in the case of America England, is divergent from the new land. Eventually, themes of home as the new land become dominant in literature. The author explores this literature, associated with immigration, as the text of the development of the American identity.

From the Paper:

"The tasks were many, and they included lofty goals such as taming the natives and more practical ones, relating to the production of goods to return home. This industry was not thought of as permanent, it was thought of as an industry needed to broaden the boundaries of the world from which they had come. In one demonstrative title, examining the history of the book in the colonial period is a statement about the nature of the colonial mind. Each individual colonist embraced their individuality as a colony charter, rather than as members of a new and emerging national identity of America."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Axelrod, A. (Ed.). (1985). The Colonial Revival in America. New York: W. W. Norton.
• Axtell, J. (1982). The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (Vol. 12). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Boehmer, E. (Ed.). (1998). Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Literature, 1870-1918. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Foner, N. (Ed.). (1987). New Immigrants in New York. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Lemay, J. L. (2000). A History of the Book in America, Volume One: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World. The Mississippi Quarterly, 54(1), 113.

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