Waubonsee Community College

American renaissance, art and expression in the age of Emerson and Whitman, F.O. Matthiessen

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

platesportraitsillustrations

index present

non fiction

American renaissance

964317

F.O. Matthiessen

art and expression in the age of Emerson and Whitman

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

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