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Chapter 16 - Unoriginality

from Part II - Forms and Formats

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2022

Justine S. Murison
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
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Summary

This essay examines the importance of unoriginality in nineteenth-century American literature, showing how imitation and conventionality affirmed writers’ respectability and provided important legitimizing credentials. By way of illustration, this essay considers the career of Washington Irving, who presented himself as a guardian of literary tradition and repeatedly narrated the virtues of allowing the past to shape the future. As Irving’s career evidences, nineteenth-century readers did not particularly prize originality but instead found value in the familiar and conventional.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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