Bringing Out Censored Stories and Reassessing the Past in Catharine Maria Sedgwick's Hope Leslie

Abstract

Catharine Maria Sedgwick's texts and achievement have been long overshadowed by the undisputed recognition of some of her male contemporaries. James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving or William Cullen Bryant have received all the credit for having shaped -and for many, created- U.S. literature. However, Sedgwick's contribution to the development of a specific native tradition in American letters is undeniable. Long before Ralph Waldo Emerson's call for a specifically national subject-matter, Sedgwick was consciously giving her texts an American perspective by combining the techniques used in sentimental fiction with the historical romance