Time, Tense, and American Literature

Reviews / Votes

'Cindy Weinstein, our finest contemporary scholar of sentimentalism, makes the temporal turn in Time, Tense, and American Literature, casting time itself as her protagonist. Weinstein charts the heretofore unexplored nonlinear intervals at the heart of the classic American novel, from its late eighteenth-century origins in the work of Charles Brockden Brown to its twenty-first-century flowering in the African American fiction of Edward P. Jones. At a moment in which the humanities themselves are under siege, Time, Tense, and American Literature insists that we reimagine the power of the literary and its constitutive use of time, space, and form. Weinstein's book should become required reading for scholars of American literature, the new aesthetics, and historians of the novel who will applaud her provocative, brilliant and beautifully written achievement.' Julia Stern, Northwestern University, Illinois 'A joy to read. Weinstein's writing is full of verve, her readings are revelatory, and her integration of narratology and historicism provides us with an important model for future work. The strangeness and significance of the humblest temporal markers - now, then, before, since - have never been so vividly on display.' Geoffrey Sanborn, Amherst College