Download or read book The Riven Home written by Ken Egan and published by Susquehanna University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antebellum culture celebrated the home as the site of nurture, affection, and equality; indeed, the middle-class home became the model of American institutions and values. Narratives from the American Renaissance, however, reveal that this was a conflicted, strained ideal. Stories from the culture represent intense social, political, and literary rivalry. Thus, writers such as Cooper, Douglass, Stowe, Melville, and Southworth projected competing visions of "the American family," visions that challenged the claims of other writers. Building upon theories of Poe, Bakhtin, and Bloom, this study carefully traces the intertextual struggles over the nation's meaning.