Literary transcendentalism; style and vision in the American Renaissance.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 1973
Place of publication: Ithaca
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 336
Subjects: American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Transcendentalism (New England); United States -- Intellectual life -- 1783-1865
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Background and general principles. The emergence of the transcendentalist aesthetic from American Unitarianism -- Transcendentalist literary method: inspiration versus craftsmanship -- The living word. From conversation to essay -- From sermon to scripture -- Word and world: nature as a model for literary form. Emerson and the idea of microcosmic form -- Catalogue rhetoric -- Thoreau and the literary excursion -- Thoreau’s A Week -- Ellery Channing: the major phase of a minor poet -- The first person. Transcendentalist self-examination and autobiographical tradition -- Emerson and Thoreau: soul versus self -- Transcendental egoism in Very and Whitman.