TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST: An entry from Charles Scribner's Sons' <i>American History Through Literature 1820-1870</i>

This digital document is an article from American History Through Literature 1820-1870, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses. The length of the article is 2449 words. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser. This set presents literature not as a simple inventory of authors or titles but rather as a historical and cultural field viewed from a wide array of contemporary perspectives. The set, which is new historicist in its approach to literary criticism, endorses the notion that not only does history affect literature, but literature itself informs history.