American renaissance : art and expression in the age of Emerson and Whitman
F. O. Matthiessen (Author)
American Renaissance has taken its place as the definitive treatment of that most distinguished age of our literature. Centering his discussion around five of its literary giants--Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman--Matthiessen elucidates their conceptions of nature and the function of literature, and the extent to which these were realized in their writings. The breadth of the book lies in the author's use of the five-year period from 1850 to 1855 as a focal point in interpreting what went before and what followed in the development of our prose and poetry. The masterpieces produced in this one extraordinarily concentrated moment of expression, and fully explored in these pages, include Representative Men, Walden, The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, Moby-Dick, Pierre, and Leaves of Grass
Criticism, interpretation, etc
1 online resource (xxiv, 678 pages) : illustrations, portraits
9780199726882, 0199726884
1420843864
From Emerson to Thoreau
1. In the optative mood
2. The actual glory
3. The metaphysical strain
4. The organic principle
Hawthorne
5. The vision of evil
6. Problem of the artist as a New Englandeer
7. Allegory and Symbolism
8. A dark necessity
Melville
9. Moment of transition
10. The revenger's tragedy
11. The troubled mind
12. Reassertion of the heart
Whitman
13. Only a language experiment
14. Man in the open air
Includes index
Electronic reproduction, [Place of publication not identified], HathiTrust Digital Library, 2024