Girgus defines the American idea as the set of values, beliefs, and traditions of democracy, equality, and republicanism and argues that writers of the New Covenant tradition challenged society to live up to its own imperatives for individual and cultural renewal. Abraham Cahan, Anzi Yezierska, Henry Roth, Johanna Kaplan, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, and E. L. Doctorow formed a new poetics to articulate a modern version of the myth and ideology of America.

Originally published in 1984.

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