Anglo-American antiphony : the late romanticism of Tennyson and Emerson / Richard E. Brantley. [electronic resource]

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brantley, Richard E.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron, 1809-1892--Criticism and interpretation.

Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo.

Comparative literature--English and American.

Comparative literature.

Comparative literature--American and English.

Romanticism--United States.

Romanticism.

Romanticism--England.

Romanticism--English-speaking countries.

Comparative literature--English and American--English-speaking countries.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 352 p. ) ill. ;

Place of Publication:

Gainesville : University Press of Florida, c1994.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This is Richard Brantley's most wide-ranging and his most personal book. It connects the epistemology of John Locke to evangelical Christianity, showing how the late ("but not belated") Romanticism of Emerson's prose and Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H. exemplifies the period's trust in experience as the best means of knowing what is true. Interpreting their work in light of the eighteenth-century thought of John Wesley (founder of British Methodism) and Jonathan Edwards (leader of the American Great Awakening), Brantley composes a complex harmony of ideas, much as the antiphonal voices in a divided chancel choir rejoice in agreeable, yet complicated, song. With a willingness to risk the widest ramifications of his ideas, Brantley explores the creative tension between empiricism and evangelicalism, reaffirming the hopefulness of Romantic literature and of the Romantic writers who used their poetry and prose to examine issues of personal urgency. He seeks specific answers to the question of ultimate meaning in human existence, boldly asserting that the optimism of Tennyson and Emerson "makes so much sense for their social world that it may even make sense for today's individual-in-society." His method is relatively unsystematic, for he invokes Keats's "Negative Capability," the ability to rest with "uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." While emphasizing this value amid multiple perspectives and cultures, Brantley, in this concluding volume of his historical-critical tetralogy, aspires to the condition of open mind and warm heart that he finds in Wesley, Edwards, Tennyson, and Emerson.

Contents:

Theme and variations

Exposition the first: The method of In memorium

Introit

Empirical procedures

Evangelical principles

Philosophical theology

Spiritual sense

Theodiceal impulse

Set pieces

Language method

Intra-romantic relationships

Exposition the second: The method of Emerson's prose

Perspective-by-perspective understanding

Religious methodology

Suspenseful subjectivity

Experience and faith

Roots of theory

The play of skepticism

Recapitulation and cadenza.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

0-8130-2132-4