Using romantic theories, Caton analyzes America's contemporary novel. Organized through the two sections of "Theory" and "Practice," Reading American Novels and Multicultural Aesthetics begins with a study of aesthetic form only to have it reveal the content of politics and history. This presentation immediately offers a unified platform for an interchange between multiple cultural and aesthetic positions. Romantic theory provides for an integrated examination of diversity, one that metaphorically fosters a solid, inclusive, and democratic legitimacy for intercultural communication. This politically astute cosmopolitan appreciation will generate an intriguing "cross-over" audience: from ethnic studies to American studies and from literary studies to romantic studies, this book will interest a range of readers.

Samuel Coleridge and European Romanticism: An Interpretive Strategy for America's Literary Canon * Dialectical and Transcultural Contexts: Otherness, Subjectivity, and Coleridge's Vision * Historical and Ideological Contexts: The Burden of F.O. Matthiessen's American Renaissance * Multicultural and Postcolonial Contexts: Philosophy's Self and Other * Poststructual Contexts: Paul de Man's Uncertainty Anxiety and the Allegory of Division * A South Western Laguna Native American Perspective: Western Eyes and Indian Visions in Leslie Marmon Silkos's Ceremony * A Korean American Perspective: Tolerating Truth and Knowledge in Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker * A South Los Angeles Mexican American Perspective: Empty Hope and Full Sensuality in Luis Rodriguez's Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A * An Antigua Caribbean American Perspective: The Quest for Empowerment in Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John * A White European American Perspective: Imagining Family and Community in Don DeLillo's White Noise * Feeling Romantic, Thinking Postmodern: Last Words on Form in a Multicultural Age