From a Modernist/Postmodernist perspective, this addresses questions of literary and cultural nationalism. The authors reveal that since the seventeenth century, American writing has reflected the political and historical climate of its time and helped define America's cultural and social parameters. Aboe all they argue that American literature has always been essentially "modern", illustrating this with a broad range of texts: from Poe and Melville to fitzgerald and Proud, to Wallace and Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Thomas Pynchon.