In Their Own Words

Far from being a melting pot in which languages other than English vanish, the United States was in the past and is now an intensely multilingual country. Absent a unifying mother tongue, how, then, can a work be or become American? This book offers the first sustained analysis of the role that translation plays for American literature. It investigates how language affects our understanding of individuals and nations, and the role that literature plays in forming and challenging our notion of cultural identity. The writers who founded American literature (such as Phillis Wheatley, James Fenimore Cooper, Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Harriet Beecher Stowe) embraced multilingualism. They recognized that, to become "American," a literary work had to be readily available in languages other than English. To circulate their work among the nation's linguistically different readers, these writers actively promoted literary translation. Because such translation also allowed texts to be exported to other countries, it fulfilled their desire to create a "world literature" that reached beyond state boundaries. Multilingualism is a hallmark of American literature, and we need to recognize that literature as inherently multilingual and transnational.