Michigan State University Press

The Seduction Novel of the Early Nation
A Call for Socio-Political Reform

Donna R. Bontatibus

Seduction, scandal, intrigue: all familiar themes toreaders of contemporary American fiction. However,
these elements are in no way modern ones. In this newstudy, Donna Bontatibus explores the roots of the
seduction novel in early America and uses it to mirror societal structures in the fledgling nation.

The novels of Susanna Rowson, Tabitha Tenney, Hannah Webster Foster, and Judith Sargent Murray and
their use of the seduction plot reveals a complex set of social and political problems experienced by middle-class women of the early nation. Using these novels, Bontatibus shows a strong link between women's status in America and the American Revolution's failure to free women from neo-colonialist oppression. She also explores seduction as a euphemism for the abusive means of maintaining women's allegiance to the new nation, depicting seduction/rape as the ultimate representation of women's colonization by a rape culture. Using current theories about gender, race, class, and colonization, The Seduction Novel of the Early Nation examines the relationship between seduction and the colonizer, and the colonized, required to maintain a rape culture.

Donna R. Bontatibus, Ph.d., teaches at Norwalk Community-Technical College in Connecticut.

Notes, bibliography, index
175 pages, 6" x 9"
Paper, 0-87013-509-0, $16.95
August 1999

Women, Revolution, and the Novels of the 1790s

Linda Lang-Peralta, editor

Literary historians working in the period of the late eighteenth century tend to focus either on authors of the Enlightenment or authors who were Romanticists. This collection of essays focuses on sub-genres of the novel form that evolved during the end of the century. These were novels-frequently written by women-that reflect the intersections between literature and popular culture. Using a representative reading of these works and current academic thinking on gender and class, the contributors to this volume offer a new perspective with which to view the novels of the 1790s.

Contributors

Barbara M. Benedict
Katherine Binhammer
Catherine H. Decker
Carl Fisher
Shawn Lisa Maurer
Clara D. McLean
Glynis Ridley
Eleanor Ty

Linda Lang-Peralta teaches at Metropolitan State College of Denver.

Notes, bibliography, index
230 pages, 6" x 9"
Paper, 0-87013-519-8, $21.95*

A Colleagues Book
Early Women Writers Series, No. 6
August 1999

The French in the Americas, 1500-1765

W. J. Eccles

In The French in the Americas, 1500-1765, W.J. Eccles, known for his powers of trenchant criticism and measured generalization, carries both to new heights and into a wider range. In this masterly analysis of New France and the other French colonies in America, he throws fresh and convincing light at once on the imperial policy of France in North America and also on the profound and enduring foundation of the French identity in Canada and America. No other historian, in my opinion, has attained such insight into the French fact in North American history.  --W.L Morton Author of The Canadian Identity

W. J. Eccles has taught at the universities of Manitoba and Alberta, and is professor emeritus at the University of Toronto.

Notes, maps, bibliography, index
300 pages, 6" x 9"
ISBN 0-87013-484-1, paper, $19.95
August 1998 U.S. Rights Only
 

September 29, 2000