Title The complicity of imagination : the American renaissance, contests of authority, and seventeenth-century English culture / Robin Grey

Published Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1997

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Description 1 online resource (viii, 294 pages) Series Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 106 Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 106. Contents Introduction: Antebellum America and the culture of seventeenth-century England -- Cultural predicaments and authorial responses -- "A seraph's eloquence": Emerson's inspired language and Milton's apocalyptic prose -- Margaret Fuller's "The Two Herberts," Emerson, and the disavowal of sequestered virtue -- "As if a green bough were laid across the page": Thoreau's seventeenth-century landscapes and extravagant personae -- Melville's Mardi and Moby-Dick, marvelous travel narratives, and seventeenth-century methods of inquiry -- Surmising the infidel: Melville reads Milton Summary The Complicity of Imagination examines the rich and complex relationship between four nineteenth-century authors and the culture and politics of seventeenth-century England. Challenging the notion that antebellum Americans were burdened by a sense of cultural inferiority in both their thought and their writing, this study portrays an American Renaissance whose writers were familiar enough with the literature and controversies of seventeenth-century England to appropriate its cultural artifacts for their own purposes American writers such as Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau, and Melville consciously absorbed literary, philosophical, and political strategies from their reading in the earlier period in order to interrogate the orthodoxies of American Whigs, as well as the agenda of the radical Democratic 'Young Americans.' By exploring the broader cultural implications of intertextual relationships, this book demonstrates how literary texts participate in the artistic, political, and theological tensions within American culture Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-280) and index Notes English Print version record Subject Fuller, Margaret, 1810-1850 -- Knowledge -- England Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 -- Knowledge -- England Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862 -- Knowledge -- England Melville, Herman, 1819-1891 -- Knowledge -- England Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 Fuller, Margaret, 1810-1850 Melville, Herman, 1819-1891 Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862 American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc English literature -- Appreciation -- United States American literature -- English influences. LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General. American literature American literature -- English influences Civilization English literature -- Appreciation Engels. Amerikaans. Bellettrie. England -- Civilization -- 17th century. England United States Genre/Form Electronic books Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book ISBN 0511003730 9780511003738 9780521495387 0521495385 0511887949 9780511887949 0511585462 9780511585463

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