50 Quintessentially American Novels via Accredited Online Colleges
This article was just sent to me via E-Mail. Thanks, Emma!
Literature is just as subjective a creative pursuit as any other. Sure there’s some technique involved in executing a practically perfect piece, but just as many startlingly amazing subversions exist as well. So don’t take this list as anything beyond one writer’s opinion. Heightened blood pressure over what books have and have not been included is more than a wee bit silly. All the novels featured here cover the dual nature of American culture, politics, history, acculturation and more. From a diverse selection of perspectives, they analyze some corner of this supposed "Dream" that everyone in the nation is supposed to share – particularly how it means something different to different people and doesn’t always play out as expected. Though many of these vivisect highly familiar (if not universal) themes and archetypes, they couldn’t have been written anywhere else.
1.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe: This impassioned anti-slavery novel helped stimulate the Abolitionist movement and further drive wedges between the American North and South, making it one of the most culturally significant fictitious works in the nation’s literary canon....
