
It is increasingly commonplace to find scholars who circle back to Ralph Waldo Emerson and his intellectual heirs as a way of better understanding contemporary social and aesthetic contexts. Why does Emerson's cultural legacy continue to influence writers so forcefully? In this innovative study, Randall Fuller examines the way pivotal twentieth-century critics have understood and deployed Emerson as part of their own larger projects aimed at reconceiving America. He examines previously unpublished material and original research on Van Wyck Brooks, Perry Miller, F.O. Matthiessen, and Sacvan Bercovitch along with other supporting thinkers. An engaging institutional history of American literary studies in the twentieth century, Emerson's Ghosts reveals the unexpected convergent forces that have shaped American cultural history in lasting ways.
This study investigates why Ralph Waldo Emerson’s intellectual legacy remains a central, recurring reference point for twentieth-century critics attempting to define the American cultural identity. Randall Fuller, a scholar of American literature, utilizes archival research and previously unpublished materials to analyze how prominent critics such as Van Wyck Brooks, Perry Miller, F.O. Matthiessen, and Sacvan Bercovitch utilized Emersonian thought to construct their own critical frameworks. The book argues that these scholars did not merely interpret Emerson, but actively reconstructed him to suit their specific political and aesthetic agendas, thereby shaping the institutional history of American literary studies.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars and historians of American literature recognize this work as a significant contribution to the history of the discipline. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose and the depth of the archival research presented by the author.
Page Count:
210
Publication Date:
2007-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
019029535X
ISBN-13:
9780190295356
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