Title: Desire, the self, the social critic
First published: 1997
Description: In Desire, the Self, the Social Critic, Professor Buckley shows that while few transcendentalists ever agree for long on philosophical or epistemological matters, four of them develop the use of "antisocial" desire into a transcendental critique of nineteenth-century American culture.

Margaret Fuller, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson represent the individual's inherent divinity and the individual's inherent ability to transcend the exigencies of the sensate world in terms that might appear to be homosexual, bisexual, or "pansexual." They alone among their contemporaries give expression to desire for the social other, give expression to desire for the self not to be seen in the heterosexist, homophobic, misogynist social realm of everyday life.
Subjects: Political and social views, History, Literature and society, American literature, History and criticism, Transcendentalism (New England), Desire in literature, Homosexuality and literature, Self in literature, Homosexualität, Literatur, Transzendentalismus, Pensée politique et sociale, Littérature américaine, Histoire et critique, Homosexualité et littérature, Histoire, Littérature et société, Begierde
Places: United States
People: Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), Herman Melville (1819-1891), Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: PS217.H65 B83 1997