Internationality in American Fiction: Henry James, William Dean Howells, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison

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 Hebert, discussed in a summarizing essay, represent responses to Faulkner.