American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman

Front Cover
Oxford University Press, 1968 - 678 pages
This text has taken its place as the definitive treatment of the most distinguished age of American literature. Centering the discussion around five literary giants of the mid-nineteenth century-Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman. Matthiessen elucidates their conceptions of the nature and function of literature, and the extent to which these were realized in their writings.
 

Contents

HAWTHORNE
177
MELVILLE
369
WHITMAN
515
CHRONOLOGY
657
INDEX
663
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (1968)

F. O. Matthiessen was a Californian by birth but grew up in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York. Educated both here and abroad, he started teaching in 1927, first at Yale and then at Harvard, where he was Professor of History and Literature. He made the field of American poetry one of his major interests and wrote critical estimates of Emerson, Poe, Eliot, and other contemporary poets. He was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and a Senior Fellow of the Kenyon School of English.

Bibliographic information