Territories of Empire: U.S. Writing from the Louisiana Purchase to Mexican Independence

Practically speaking, nineteenth-century American literary history really refers to writings from the East seaboard of the United States. In fact, no author from the West prior to Mark Twain has been admitted into the canon of American literature, a longstanding bias that continues to define the narrative arc of U.S. literary nationalism. Western authors are absent from the canon and classroom largely because their "regional writings" are assumed to be second-rate in comparison with the ostensibly more complex literary cultures of the eastern states. Andy Doolen's monograph reorients literary history, turning to the neglected Western writings that shaped the distinctive process of U.S. expansionism in the years following the Louisiana Purchase. As Doolen shows, these "cartographic texts" legitimated U.S. occupancy of contested border zones and justified the nation's move westward. In five chapters, Territories of Empire surveys an under-studied archive of these texts, ranging from expl