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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Critical Reception of Emerson: Unsettling All Things

The Critical Reception of Emerson: Unsettling All Things

Wider, Sarah Ann

Hardcover

Series: Studies in English and American Literature and Culture, Book 20

PhilosophyLiterary FiguresLiterary Criticism

ISBN10: 1571131663
ISBN13: 9781571131669
Publisher: Camden House (NY)
Published: Dec 5 2000
Pages: 250
Weight: 1.19
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A history of the most important scholarly criticism of Emerson from his time down to the present.

Since the 1820s, Ralph Waldo Emerson has provoked an unsettled response from his readers and contentiousness among critics. Critics still contest Emerson's position: Was he poet or philosopher? Did he liberate American literatureor narrow it to a one-dimensional idea? Is his signature concept of self-reliance the most profound contribution to democratic individualism or the epitome of capitalism's impoverished thought? But by the mid 20th century the swing between condemnation and celebration of Emerson had given way to the familiar story of his bisected career, which provided a neat structure for viewing his life and work, and shaped our thought about him. Now that story is beingchallenged by the application of poststructuralism and textual editing, and with the publication of an amazing repertoire of editions, the Emerson canon is changing. The result is that Emerson criticism now faces a far more complex group of writings than before. One hundred and fifty years after Emerson styled himself an 'experimenter' who would 'unsettle all things, ' this new critical history illustrates the continuing, thought-provoking success of thatexperiment.

Sarah Ann Wider is Professor of English at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.

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