Reviews of Books

If this most recent addition to the Modern Language Association's growing series on "Options for Teaching" is any indication of the practical state of the field, then early American studies is thriving and nurturing some of the most exciting innovations in the academy and the classroom. The editor, Carla Mulford, knows the field well, having spent the last decade as the early period editor of the Heath Anthology of American Literature (1st ed., 1990) and having authored several essays about the challenges of teaching the Heath's expanded canon.1 These challenges are considerable and have been intensified by the enormous upheaval in American studies, which for the last quarter century has been unsettled by questions of ideology, pedagogy, and canonicity. Mulford alludes to these disciplinary tremors in her brief introduction, where she points out that all three terms in the title of this volume—early, American, and literatures—remain strongly contested. "As a whole," she concludes, "the volume represents the varieties of writing scholars and teachers have been examining for the past few decades in their attempt to reconceptualize 'American' literature as not merely a function of British culture or a putatively American past" (p. 3). In other words, this volume reflects some of the recent archival discoveries that have significantly expanded the field and shifted attention to what Mulford calls, in the most recent assessment published in this journal, "the ineluctability of the peoples' stories."2  Most of the seasoned teachers and scholars who contribute to this collection treat the literature of the early period neither as a monolithic expression of Anglo-American culture or the precursor of a special "American" tradition and national identity. It is fitting that, as we enter a new century we hope will be marked by increased diversity in all fields of endeavor, we should be rediscovering and welcoming an enriching, multicultural past.

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