William Dean Howells

This collection of essays is part of a project that surveys American literatures in terms of the writers' responses to international literature. Among English American novelists, 1860s to 1990s, James and Howells contributed significantly to the programmatic Great American Novel by broadening the internationality they engaged with to include French and Russian books among the works to which they related their own. Faulkner is a key figure of a later phase when a number of American authors, while drawing upon a similar breadth of internationality, in turn became exemplary abroad in various countries. Morrison, interpreted as contributing to intra-American internationality, and the French Canadian writer H bert, discussed in a summarizing essay, represent responses to Faulkner.