This article offers an impetus to a semantic analysis of the discipline ofAmerican literary history from a systems theoretical perspective. The analysisis based on a representative selection of four literary histories in the field. Themain argument is chat these histories make use of a double legitimizationstrategy to authorize themselves as definitive reference works on Americanliterature. On the one hand, they significantly broaden the object of study asit has been demarcated in previous works. On the other, they plead for areconnection of the study of literature to its original social mission. The functionof this double strategy is to assert the autonomy of American literary history.
