Voyages of the Self: Pairs, Parallels and Patterns in American Art and Literature
"This relatively slim volume can be seen not only as completing the trilogy begun byAmerican Painting and the Nineteenth CenturyandNature and Culturebut also as a lean, elegant summary of a lifetime's reading, looking, and thinking."--Karen Wilkin,The Hudson Review"A breathtaking achievement. Barbara Novak's brilliant inquiry into the transactions of the American self both accepts the mystery of America's many dualities and explains how they coexist and even reinforce each other."--Marc Pachter, Director of the Natinoal Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution"While the identity of the American self is a perennially fascinating subject, no one, to my knowledge, has played off several of the most representative explorations of these journeys in both literature and the visual arts before, and there is no one in American literary or art history who could do it as well as Barbara Novak. Long acknowledged as America's premier guide across these borders, she is true to form inVoyages of the Self.... It is a pleasure to read prose so wholly free of jargon, always sure of its footing, at the same time elegant and economical in its formulations, and always intriguing. Would that the literature contained more writing like hers and more thinking this perceptive and steadily revealing."--Giles Gunn, Professor of English and of Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara"With her unmatched knowledge of the total range of American art, Novak uncovers many hitherto unseen correspondences between painting and literature.Voyages of the Selfis a sweeping contribution to American cultural history, brimming with fresh insights and unexpected revelations. Along with Oxford's editions of Novak's classic booksAmerican Painting of the Nineteenth CenturyandNature and Culture, it becomes part of a triumphant trilogy and the capstone of Novak's distinguished career as the dean of American art historians."--David S. Reynolds, author ofJohn Brown, AbolitionistandWalt Whitman's America