Reconstituting the American Renaissance , livre ebook

289

pages

English

Ebooks

2003

Écrit par
Grossman Jay Grossman

Publié par
Duke University Press

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289

pages

English

Ebooks

2003

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

18 juillet 2003

EAN13

9780822384533

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

Challenging the standard periodization of American literary history, Reconstituting the American Renaissance reinterprets the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman and the relationship of these two authors to each other. Jay Grossman argues that issues of political representation-involving vexed questions of who shall speak and for whom-lie at the heart of American political and literary discourse from the revolutionary era through the Civil War. By taking the mid-nineteenth-century period, traditionally understood as marking the advent of literary writing in the United States, and restoring to it the ways in which Emerson and Whitman engaged with eighteenth-century controversies, rhetorics, and languages about political representation, Grossman departs significantly from arguments that have traditionally separated American writing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Reconstituting the American Renaissance describes how Emerson and Whitman came into the period of their greatest productivity with different conceptions of the functions and political efficacy of the word in the world. It challenges Emerson's position as Whitman's necessary precursor and offers a cultural history that emphasizes the two writers' differences in social class, cultural experience, and political perspective. In their writings between 1830 and 1855, the book finds contrasting conceptions of the relations between the "representative man" and the constituencies to whom, and for whom, he speaks. Reconstituting the American Renaissance opens up the canonical relationship between Emerson and Whitman and multiplies the historical and discursive contexts for understanding their published and unpublished works.

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Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

18 juillet 2003

EAN13

9780822384533

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

r e c o n s t i t u t i n g t h e a m e r i c a n r e n a i s s a n c e

new americanists

A Series Edited by

Donald E. Pease

reconstituting

the american renaissance

Emerson, Whitman, and the Politics of Representation

jay grossman

duke university press

durham and london

2003

∫2003duke university press

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$

Typeset in Minion by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear

on the last printed page of this book.

i n m e m o ry o f m y pa r e n t s m

contents m

acknowledgmentsmix

abbreviationsmxi

introduction

Representative Strategiesm1

chapter oneThe Rise of the Representational Arts in the United Statesm28

chapter two

Rereading Emerson/Whitmanm75

chapter three

chapter four

Class Actionsm116

Representing Menm161

notesm207

works consultedm239

indexm263

acknowledgments m

I have been more than fortunate in the mentors and colleagues who have shepherded me through the research and writing of this book. Over many years, Betsy Erkkila has generously shared with me her insights not only into American literary and cultural history, but also into what makes research, writing, and a career in literary studies valuable. Margreta de Grazia’s inﬂuence and support have been enduring, and have meant everything to me. Carl Smith read the manuscript with great care, then gave me permission to ignore his comments wherever I chose; the book is signiﬁcantly better for his attention to it. Jay Fliegelman was one of the ﬁrst readers of the manuscript, which has—as have I—beneﬁted in innumerable ways from the profound depth of his knowl-edge and his even more profound generosity. I am grateful to Donald Pease for his attention to this project, his acute commentary on the manuscript, and his support of its culmination in print. This book and I have also had many supporters and perceptive readers at several institutions; I hope these friends will understand all that is meant by an unembellished listing of their names: Tom Augst, Michèle Aina Barale, Ni-cola Beisel, Lawrence Buell, Jack Cameron, Chris Castiglia, Rhonda Cobham-Sander, Jodi Cranston, Ed Folsom, Judy Frank, Albert Gelpi, Teresa Goddu, Roland Greene, Bill Handley, Andrea Henderson, David Herman, Patrick John-son, Suvir Kaul, Jack Matthews, John McGreevy, Alice Mitinger, Susan Miz-ruchi, Stephen Orgel, Dale Peterson, Ken Price, Michael Prokopow, Lisa Raskin, Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Geo√rey Saunders Schramm, Martha Nell Smith, Marc Stein, the late Jan Thaddeus, Kim Townsend, Kevin Van Anglen, Lynn Wardley, Eric Wertheimer. My appreciation goes to my students Joe Gerber, Coleman Hutchison, and Marcy Dinius, all of whom have been a sounding board for ideas in this book, and to Dana Bilsky, who also diligently proofread the manuscript. Hunt Howell

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