Predicting the Past

Reviews / Votes

In this remarkable book, Boyden argues that American literary history constitutes a literary technology for the construction of a past that answers the needs of the present. Boyden's critical genealogy of the discipline of American literary history promises to become a benchmark text.
Donald E. Pease, Director of the Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College The strengths of Boyden's work include first of all a comprehensive knowledge not only of American literature, but also of its primary theorists and historiographers, from the Duyckinck brothers to Saevan Bercovitch, David Shumway, Werner Sollors, and Elizabeth Renker. Boyden adds to this an expert negotiation of vexed matters of literary value, in this case not to privilege the status of value or establish literary hierarchies, but to futther a discussion about how the question ofvalue functions within larger intellectual debates. Part of this negotiation involves an impressive series of micro-historical investigations associated with hotly debated critical issues such as the right way to frame Emily Dickinson or confessional poetry.
Ronald Bush, Oxford University A brilliant account of how American literature has systematically internalized the conception of utopian alternatives, so that the projected future of the subject is tied inexorably to its past. Predicting the Past is a major theoretical contribution to the internationalization of the field.
Paul Giles, Professor of American Literature, Oxford University A member of the new generation of international Americanists deeply familiar with America's institutions, myths, and imaginaries, Boyden ably illustrates the productive possibilities of practicing American Studies as a non-American Americanist.
Djelal Kadir, Founding President, International American Studies Association In this insightful and accessible analysis, Boyden reveals the complex ways U.S. literary historians have constructed narratives of national identity and culture that conceal crucial elements of the story. This is an engaging, groundbreaking study of an influential historical form.
Emory Elliott, General Editor, Columbia Literary History of the United States Even so, a book that throws light on the long history of ideological self-righteousness that has driven American literature and culture studies is hard not to like.
Peter Carafiol, Portland State University, Modern Language Quarterly, December 2011