Wordsworth in American Literary Culture

It is hard to deny the enormous impact of Wordsworth's writing upon the literary and cultural world that followed him. This new collection of specially-commissioned essays provides the most complete picture yet to be produced of the influence of William Wordsworth's writing upon major American writers of the nineteenth century, such as Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Melville, Dickinson and others. In addition to providing a thorough account of Wordsworth's influence on American literature, this collection also seeks to address the poet's influence on American culture, from religious reform to civic humanism, and in so doing hints at a new theory of transatlantic influence that accounts for transnational literary as well as cultural exchange. Contributors include James Butler, Elizabeth Fay, Stephen Gill, Susan Manning and Adam Potkay, amongst others.

List of contents

List of Figures Foreword; S. Gill Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements A Note on the Texts Introduction: Wordsworth's American Legacy; J.Pace & M.Scott 'Grounds for Comparison': The Place of Style in Transatlantic Romanticism; S.Manning The Wordsworthian Metamorphosis of Natty Bumppo; R.Gravil Discord at Pennacook: Whittier and the Problem of American Picturesque; B.Graver Transatlantic Gothic and Race: Wordsworth, Hawthorne, Poe, Chopin, Cable and Chesnutt; J.Pace Wordsworth and Bishop Doane: High-Church Romanticism on the Delaware; A.Potkay Henry David Thoreau as Wordsworthian Poet ; L.Newman Intimations of Imitation: Wordsworth, Whitman and the Emergence of Leaves of Grass; K.Karbiener The Wordsworthian Cast of Dickinson's Romantic Heritage; R.E.Brantley Wordsworth, Bostonian Chivalry and the Uses of Art; E.Fay Home (At Grasmere and 'On the Range'): Wordsworth and Owen Wister's The Virginian ; J.A.Butler An Ethics of Wonder and the Cure of Poetry: Wordsworth, William James and the American Reader; M.Scott Index

About the author

RICHARD E. BRANTLEY Professor of English and American Literature, University of Florida, USA
JAMES A. BUTLER Professor of English, La Salle University, USA
ELIZABETH FAY Teaches British Romanticism, University of Massachusetts-Boston, USA
STEPHEN GILL Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford and Fellow of Lincoln College, UK
BRUCE GRAVER Professor of English, Providence College, USA
RICHARD GRAVIL Founding Editor of Symbiosis; previously Reader in English Literature at the College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth, UK
KAREN KARBIENER Teaches at New York University, USA
SUSAN MANNING Grierson Professor of English Literature, University of Edinburgh, UK
LANCE NEWMAN Assistant Professor of American and British Literature, California State University, San Marcos, USA
ADAM POTKAY Professor of English, College of William & Mary, USA

Summary

It is hard to deny the enormous impact of Wordsworth's writing upon the literary and cultural world that followed him. This new collection of specially-commissioned essays provides the most complete picture yet to be produced of the influence of William Wordsworth's writing upon major American writers of the nineteenth century, such as Thoreau, Fuller, Whitman, Melville, Dickinson and others. In addition to providing a thorough account of Wordsworth's influence on American literature, this collection also seeks to address the poet's influence on American culture, from religious reform to civic humanism, and in so doing hints at a new theory of transatlantic influence that accounts for transnational literary as well as cultural exchange. Contributors include James Butler, Elizabeth Fay, Stephen Gill, Susan Manning and Adam Potkay, amongst others.

Additional text

'A highly enjoyable and scholarly gathering of essays exploring some of Wordsworth's multiple American afterlives. This book reveals with new clarity an absorbing story of transpositions and transformations, an extraordinarily multifarious influence felt throughout a culture, from Whitman and Dickinson, Thoreau and William James, to cowboy stories and gothic tales. Whatever generalisations we may have entertained before about Wordsworth's place in nineteenth century America, we shall have to think again now.' - Seamus Perry, Balliol College, Oxford, UK

'This volume is a valuable addition to the growing body of work on the transatlantic dimensions of Romanticism...Pace and Scott can justly claim to have provided 'a more thorough examination of nineteenth-century America's Wordsworth than has ever been undertaken'' - Robin Jarvis, University of the West of England

'Wordsworth in American Literary Culture... provide[s] an important and much needed reassessment of transatlantic influence narratives by offering alternative ways of thinking about the impact of Wordsworth's literary power in American culture... In collecting scholars on either side of the Atlantic and specialists in American literature and British Romanticism, the editors of this book not only initiate an important transatlantic dialogue that encourages academics to investigate Wordsworth's broad legacy in American Romanticism, but also offer further possibilities for re-energizing and re-directing transatlantic studies.' - Sohui Lee, Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations

Report

'A highly enjoyable and scholarly gathering of essays exploring some of Wordsworth's multiple American afterlives. This book reveals with new clarity an absorbing story of transpositions and transformations, an extraordinarily multifarious influence felt throughout a culture, from Whitman and Dickinson, Thoreau and William James, to cowboy stories and gothic tales. Whatever generalisations we may have entertained before about Wordsworth's place in nineteenth century America, we shall have to think again now.' - Seamus Perry, Balliol College, Oxford, UK
'This volume is a valuable addition to the growing body of work on the transatlantic dimensions of Romanticism...Pace and Scott can justly claim to have provided 'a more thorough examination of nineteenth-century America's Wordsworth than has ever been undertaken'' - Robin Jarvis, University of the West of England
'Wordsworth in American Literary Culture... provide[s] an important and much needed reassessment of transatlantic influence narratives by offering alternative ways of thinking about the impact of Wordsworth's literary power in American culture... In collecting scholars on either side of the Atlantic and specialists in American literature and British Romanticism, the editors of this book not only initiate an important transatlantic dialogue that encourages academics to investigate Wordsworth's broad legacy in American Romanticism, but also offer further possibilities for re-energizing and re-directing transatlantic studies.' - Sohui Lee, Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations

Product details

• Authors: J. Pace, Joel Pace
• Assisted by: Pace (Editor), J Pace (Editor), J. Pace (Editor), Joel Pace (Editor), Scott (Editor), Scott (Editor), M. Scott (Editor), Matthew Scott (Editor)
• Publisher: Palgrave UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 14.01.2014
• EAN: 9781349721290
• ISBN: 978-1-349-72129-0
• No. of pages: 267
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; B, Fiction & related items, Poetry, Fiction, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature: history & criticism, Poetry and Poetics, European Literature, Literature, Modern—19th century, Nineteenth-Century Literature, British literature, British and Irish Literature, Fiction Literature