Studies in the Novel

During the 1980s and 1990s and the so-called “Culture Wars,” many new texts got incorporated into the canons of American literature. These books frequently were authored by members of historically marginalized groups and relied on the histories, vernacular language, and symbols from those cultural groups. Many proponents of African American literature, Native American literature, and other “new” literary configurations argued for scholarly methods that followed from long-standing cultural and social practices within the various communities. This led to a wealth of new scholarly paradigms for analyzing and understanding these works. Deeply intertwined with the rise of multicultural approaches to literature, postmodernism, with its deep skepticism about grand narratives and universal constructs, caused literary scholars to question traditional literary approaches. Aesthetics, in particular, became the subject of considerable criticism because it seemed to sever a work of art from its historical and cultural contexts.

In Reading American Novels and Multicultural Aesthetics, Lou Caton seeks to recuperate aesthetics, especially as articulated by the Romantics, and demonstrate how this approach to literature can help us gain insight into multicultural literature. Caton’s book is wonderfully provocative, questioning the orthodoxies of both traditional and multicultural approaches to literature. Caton challenges readers to examine the potential linkages between multicultural novels and aesthetic theory. As a result, the book demands that its readers have familiarity and dexterity with both Romanticism and contemporary novels. Because he seeks to show the overlap between the two, Reading American Novels and Multicultural Aesthetics can be quite challenging to read as it covers a lot of intellectual terrain, frequently within a single paragraph or page. Because of this breadth, the book could have been well-served by a more straightforward presentation of the main tenets of Romanticism before applying it to the contemporary scene.

The book begins with a discussion of how Romanticism can offer some key insights to canon formation, especially as multiculturalism and postmodernism swept through English departments. In particular, Caton worries that the recent emphasis on multiple ways of knowing and metaphysical skepticism has undermined the universal humanism that nourished the growth of literary studies. The juxtaposition of universal aesthetic standards against specific cultural truths resulted in contentious debates both in the academy and in public discourse. As these positions hardened, little common ground could be discerned between these two. Romanticism, according to Caton, provides a possible exit to the impasse confronting the humanities because “contradiction is not viewed as defeat but rather as inducement toward a more integrative and larger perspective” (3). Caton finds that Romanticism, a universalist approach, possesses the ability to negotiate metaphysical skepticism and numerous culturally specific ways of knowing: “the practicality of self-interest and cultural relativity has meaning only in contrast to the universal ideal of a shared, communal truth” (7). In other words, a reader can only understand narratives about specific communities against the background of a greater, transhistorical perspective. For Caton, the Romantic quest narrative, which blended the medieval quest tradition with the journeys of self-discovery of the nineteenth century, offer a striking analogue for much contemporary multicultural literature (16). Viewing multiculturalism as a form dedicated to charting individual and cultural identities, Caton argues that Romanticism [End Page 380] can allow scholars to negotiate the tensions inherent in self-discovery in a multicultural and postmodern world.

After the introduction, the book is divided into two sections: Theory and Practice. The first four chapters proceed to explore Samuel Coleridge’s articulation of Romanticism (chapter 1) and apply it to F.O. Matthiessen’s efforts to build a canon of American literature (chapter 2), postcolonial theory as outlined by Abdul JanMohamed (chapter 3), and Paul de Man’s pioneering efforts in deconstruction, which profoundly affected the shape of postmodern theory (chapter 4) This structure affords Caton the intellectual space to examine how dialectics and polarity shape much literary production, including the early efforts to create an American literary canon that “more or less balanced an appreciation for politics and art” before the New Critics...