The Cambridge History of American Literature: Volume 4, Nineteenth-Century Poetry 1800-1910Sacvan Bercovitch, Cyrus R. K. Patell This is the first complete narrative history of nineteenth-century American poetry. Barbara Packer explores the neoclassical and satiric forms mastered by the early Federalist poets; the creative reaches of once-celebrated, and still compelling, poets like Longfellow and Whittier; the distinctive lyric forms developed by Emerson and the Transcendentalists. Shira Wolosky provides a new perspective on the achievement of female poets of the period, as well as a close appreciation of African-American poets, including the collective folk authors of the Negro spirituals. She also illuminates the major works of the period, from Poe through Melville and Crane, to Whitman and Dickinson. The authors of this volume discuss this extraordinary literary achievement both in formal terms and in its sustained engagement with changing social and cultural conditions. In doing so they recover and elucidate American poetry of the nineteenth century for our twenty-first century pleasure, profit, and renewed study. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 85
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... languages , mainly their concerns center upon writing in English in this country - " American literature " as it has ... language literatures in the United States , the term " America " for them is neither a narrative donnée - an assumed ...
... languages , mainly their concerns center upon writing in English in this country - " American literature " as it has ... language literatures in the United States , the term " America " for them is neither a narrative donnée - an assumed ...
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... language from the surging pluralism of an emerging mass society , Herman Melville , Stephen Crane , and Paul Lawrence Dunbar fashioned lastingly painful poems out of stark confrontations with this society's fractures , paradoxes ...
... language from the surging pluralism of an emerging mass society , Herman Melville , Stephen Crane , and Paul Lawrence Dunbar fashioned lastingly painful poems out of stark confrontations with this society's fractures , paradoxes ...
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Contents
reverence and ambition | 11 |
Neoclassicism comic and satiric verse | 17 |
Early narrative and lyric | 41 |
Transcendentalism | 87 |
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER | 137 |
the claims of thetoric | 147 |
Modest claims | 155 |
Claiming the Bible | 200 |
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Allston American culture American Poetry assert Barlow beauty becomes Bible Biblical body Bryant called central century Christian claims commitment Crane dead death dialect divine domestic Dunbar's economic Edgar Allan Poe emerges Emerson Emily Dickinson Emma Lazarus England English eternal experience female figure Frances Harper gender genteel George Moses Horton heart heaven Henry Wadsworth Longfellow hymns identity imagery imagination individual interpretation John Greenleaf Whittier Julia Ward language Lazarus Leaves of Grass literary literature Longfellow Lydia Sigourney Melville metaphysical modesty multiple nature nineteenth-century Poe's poem poem's poet poetic political President publishes redemption reflects religious remains represents rhetoric role Santayana seems selfhood sense sexual signified Sigourney Sigourney's slave slavery social Song sonnet soul speak specific sphere spiritual structure texts thee thou tradition typology verse vision voice Walt Whitman Whitman Whittier woman women words writing wrote