Reading America: Essays on American Literature

Front Cover
Knopf, 1987 - 320 pages
The distinguished critic offers us his selection of his essays and commentaries on American writing and writers, from Emerson and Whitman through Auden and Ashbery. Donoghue examines the canon in the light of the American enterprise -- the imperatives of a powerful national past versus the subversions of an irrevocably anarchic spirit. The result is indispensable readinig for anyone hoping to inquire humanely into our national literature. -- Publisher's description.

Contents

America in Theory
3
Emerson at First
20
Thoreau
40
Whitman
68
Emily Dickinson
97
Henry Adamss Novels III
111
Henry James and The Sense of the Past
127
On Gerontion
144
Trilling Mind and Society
175
Conrad Aiken
199
Marianne Moore
206
Wallace Stevens
218
H D
237
Auden
254
John Berryman
276
Sylvia Plath
296

Stevenss Gibberish
158

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About the author (1987)

Denis Donoghue is University Professor and Henry James Professor of English and American Letters at New York University.

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