Formalism, experience, and the making of American literature in the nineteenth century / Theo Davis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, Theo.

Series:

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864.

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Literary form--History--19th century.

Literary form.

History.

Experience in literature.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864--Criticism and interpretation.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882--Criticism and interpretation.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896--Criticism and interpretation.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher.

Literature and society--United States--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

Criticism and interpretation.

United States.

United States--Intellectual life--19th century.

Intellectual life.

Physical Description:

vi, 203 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Summary:

Theo Davis offers a new account of the emergence of a national literature in the United States. Taking American literature's universalism as an organizing force that must be explained rather than simply exposed, she contends that Emerson's, Hawthorne's, and Stowe's often-noted investigations of experience are actually based in a belief that experience is an abstract category governed by typicality, not the property of the individual subject. Additionally, these authors locate the form of the literary work in the domain of abstract experience, projected out of - not embodied in - the text. After tracing the emergence of these beliefs out of Scottish Common Sense philosophy and through early American literary criticism, Davis analyzes how American authors' prose seeks to work an art of abstract experience. In so doing, she reconsiders the place of form in literary studies today.

Contents:

Introduction : new critical formalism and identity in Americanist criticism

Types of interest : Scottish theory, literary nationalism, and John Neal

Sensing Hawthorne : the figure of Hawthorne's affect

"Life is an ecstasy" : Ralph Waldo Emerson and A. Bronson Alcott

Laws of experience : truth and feeling in Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-193) and index.

ISBN:

9780521872966

0521872960

OCLC:

86172888

Online:

Publisher description

Contributor biographical information