The essays collected here do an impressive job of matching Riddel's own attempt to preserve both the literariness of philosophy and the philosophical force of the literary."" -- Yearbook of English Studies

These eleven essays confront the ongoing problem of defining American and modern -- terms that often travel together as they defy periodisation and other boundaries. Reading questions of nationalism and literature against the grain, the critics represented here address the epistemology and history of literary canonization, not simply the empirics of adding to or subtracting from the American canon.

As a whole, the volume comprises a range of poststructuralist and postmodern readings of American literature, as well as critiques of American aesthetics. Individually, each essay offers an in-depth and rigorous critique of a key text, or textual knot, in the ongoing and productively self-reflexive enterprise of American literary criticism.