The Raven and the Whale: Poe, Melville, and the New York Literary Scene
"The Raven and the Whale deals explicitly with the social 'confusions' in the age of Poe and Melville and analyzes the 'terms' propounded to these two maverick artists by rival literary cliques for whom correct doctrine -- what might be called the literary 'party line' of the period -- was the price of acceptance... In describing meticulously the 'war of words and wits' and the critics, essayists, poets, and novelists who shot at one another from their respective journalistic fortresses, Professor Miller has brought order into the confused picture of literary life in the 1840s and 1850s." -- New England Quarterly"The thesis [is] that 'a Republic may abandon the artist not because of his aberration but because of its own. In this instance, the aberration is the 'nation's distraction over the problem of comprehending it own identity'... The examination of this thesis in the foreground of editorial tempers and temperaments is immensely provocative." -- American Scholar"Perry Miller has written a fascinating chapter in American literary history." -- Nineteenth-Century Fiction