
$32.00
Doctrine and Difference
Readings in Classic American Literature
- Available for pre-order. Item will ship after June 8, 2021
Preview
Book Description
Doctrine and Difference: Readings in Classic American Literature is the second and culminating volume to a project that began in 1997, with an aim to study the authors of what was previously called "The American Renaissance". While Volume I spanned from the 17th century to 1850, Volume II begins with Emerson, Hawthorne and Poe in the 1840s, moves on to look at Hawthorne and Melville in the 1850s, and ends with Emerson in 1860, alongside cutting-edge critical context. Reading Nineteenth-Century Authors leaves the Puritans of the previous volume behind to focus on later writings from a wider set of American Renaissance authors and the relations among them: Melville on Hawthorne, Hawthorne on Emerson, Hawthorne on Poe. It re-confirms how deeply interwoven these authors’ works became, and how far reading them together in the light of their shared inheritance makes the study of them more important than ever in the ongoing interpretation of American literature.
Table of Contents
Preface
01. MAKING CONSCIENCE, TRUSTING GOD: The (Almost) Weaned Affections of Anne Bradstreet
02. COSMOPOLITAN AND PROVINCIAL: Hawthorne and the Reference of American Studies
03. "SUPERNAL LOVELINESS" AND "FANTASTIC FOOLERY": The Aesthetic in Poe and Hawthorne
04. CONSCIOUSNESS AND ASCRIPTION: Emerson and the Scandal of the Subject
05. "LIFE WITHIN THE LIFE": Sin and Self in Hawthorne’s New England
06. THE SOUTH SEAS IN MELVILLE: Genre, Myth (and Sex) in Typee, Omoo, Mardi
07. "ARTIFICIAL FIRE": Melville and the Mythology of "Ethan Brand"
08. INHERITANCE, REPETITION, COMPLICITY, REDEMPTION: Sin and Salvation in The House of the Seven Gables
09. CHARITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS: Pity and Politics in Melville’s Short Fiction
10. "THE FRIENDSHIP OF THE SEASONS": Climax and Confirmation in the Plot of Walden
11. "OUR CONVERSATION WITH NATURE": Emerson’s Cave and Plato’s "Allegory"
12. "MEAN OR UNAMIABLE PEOPLE": Manners, Morals (and Grace?) in The Rise of Silas Lapham and The American
Author(s)
Biography
Michael Colacurcio was born in Cincinnati and educated there by Jesuits. He took his Ph.D. at Illinois in 1963 and went to work at Cornell, moving to UCLA in 1985, where he is now a Distinguish Professor. Winner of teaching awards at both universities and, since 2007, a member of the American Society of Arts and Sciences, his works include The Province of Piety (1985), Doctrine and Difference (1997), and Godly Letters (2006).