Revolutionary writers : literature and authority in the new republic, 1725-1810 / Emory Elliott.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Elliott, Emory, 1942-2009.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--Revolutionary period, 1775-1783--History and criticism.

American literature--1783-1850--History and criticism.

Authority in literature.

Literature and society--United States.

Literature and society.

United States.

United States--Intellectual life--18th century.

Intellectual life.

Physical Description:

x, 324 pages ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1986, c1982.

Summary:

Elliott demonstrates how America's first men of letters--Timothy Dwight, Joel Barlow, Philip Freneau, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, and Charles Brockden Brown--sought to make individual genius in literature express the collective genius of the American people. Without literary precedent to aid them, Elliott argues, these writers attempted to convey a vision of what America ought to be; and when the moral imperatives implicit in their writings were rejected by the vast number of their countrymen they became pioneers of another sort--the first to experience the alienation from mainstream American culture that would become the fate of nearly all serious writers who would follow.

Notes:

Includes index.

Bibliography: pages [303]-315; includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

0195039955

OCLC:

12663192