Founded in Fiction: The Uses of Fiction in the Early United States

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An original account of the importance of diverse forms of fiction in the early American republic-one that challenges the "rise of the novel" narrative What is the use of fiction This question preoccupied writers in the early United States, where many cultural authorities insisted that fiction-reading would mislead readers about reality. Founded

Reviews

"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year"
"Founded in Fiction is as much an intellectual history as a literary one: Koenigs writes with precision and authority about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American print culture, religious debates, transatlantic literary relations, political philosophy, and periodical culture, elegantly interweaving this rich array of cultural materials with the complex rhetorical debates taking place in fiction. . . . Koenigs synthesizes the many explanations and defenses of fiction into a convincing, elegant argument about knowledge making in the early United States."---Sin Silyn Roberts, Nineteenth-Century Literature
"Thomas Koenigs navigates smoothly through a wealth of texts. . . adding to our understanding of American literary history, plunging us into the mindset of the time, all the while giving us an insight into the periodical press and literary criticism of the antebellum period and taking us through the political, social, aesthetic, and literary debates of a fascinating and far too long underestimated period."---Pauline Pilote, Transatlantica
"[A] rich and fascinating history of fictionality, illuminating the complexity of early experimentation while tracing its contributions to the aesthetic and cultural dominance of what came to be known as the American novel. . . . Essential." * Choice Reviews *
"This study is an important reconsideration of early American fiction that consistently demonstrates the sophisticated self-consciousness with which various American writers approached the troubling yet dynamic concept of fictionality. . . . Deeply researched and thoughtfully argued."---Philip Gould, American Literary History
"Founded in Fiction heightens our awareness of the exact processes of fictions meaning-making and helpfully extends literary criticisms unsettling of literariness as a value taken for granted."---Xine Yao, Eighteenth-Century Fiction
"Offers one of the most fascinating reinterpretations of the early US novel."---Joseph Rezek, Early American Literature

Author Bio

Thomas Koenigs is associate professor of English at Scripps College. Twitter @tomkoenigs