13 The Fireside and Sentimental Poets
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Astrid Franke
Abstract
This article examines the work of the two most popular and commercially successful authors of the nineteenth century, Lydia Sigourney and Henry W. Longfellow. It places their work in the contexts of a growing and differentiating literary market, the demand for a national literature, the issues foregrounded by a number of social reform movements, and ideas of poetry implicit in their texts. While both authors struggled with the idea of poetry as commodity, their struggles reflect gender- specific differences.
Abstract
This article examines the work of the two most popular and commercially successful authors of the nineteenth century, Lydia Sigourney and Henry W. Longfellow. It places their work in the contexts of a growing and differentiating literary market, the demand for a national literature, the issues foregrounded by a number of social reform movements, and ideas of poetry implicit in their texts. While both authors struggled with the idea of poetry as commodity, their struggles reflect gender- specific differences.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- The Editors’ Preface V
- Contents VII
- 0 Introduction 1
-
Part I: Definitions, Backgrounds, Contexts
- 1 Antebellum Period and Romanticism: Definitions and Demarcations 9
- 2 Antebellum Literary Culture: The Institutions of Romanticism 33
- 3 Transnational Dimensions of Romanticism 55
- 4 American Romanticism and Religion 81
- 5 Romanticism and European Philosophy, or “Idealism As It Appears in 1842” 119
-
Part II: Intellectual, Spiritual, and Political Debates
- 6 Romanticism and Democracy 143
- 7 Romanticism and Social Reform 163
- 8 American Romanticism and Esotericism 185
- 9 America as Interior Space: Artificial Landscapes and the Modernization of Literature in Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Fiction 207
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Part III: Contestations of Authorship and Genre
- 10 Authorship as Profession and the Uses of Genre in Antebellum America 229
- 11 Poet-Prophets and Seers: American Romanticism, Authorship, and Literary Institutions 249
- 12 Life Writing and Romantic Expressivism 269
- 13 The Fireside and Sentimental Poets 293
-
Part IV: Close Readings
- 14 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature (1836): American Romantic “Manifesto” 313
- 15 Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845): Romanticism and (Proto)Feminism 335
- 16 The Continuous Creation of Walden 355
- 17 Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) 375
- 18 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and the Historical Imagination in American Romanticism 389
- 19 Romanticism and History: Göttingen and George Bancroft’s History of the United States (1834) 415
- 20 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and the Politics of Sentimentalism 435
- 21 Myth and Mythmaking in the Douglass Circle 453
- 22 “The Soul Selects Her Own Society”: Emily Dickinson’s Poetry and the Creation of the Self 477
- 23 The Great Psalm of the Republic: Walt Whitman’s Democratic Poetics 495
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Part V: Reception Histories
- 24 Transcendentalist Legacies in American Philosophy 517
- 25 Rethinking Gender in Antebellum American Literature 537
- 26 “In the Woods We Return to Reason and Faith”: American Romanticism, Environmentalism, and Seeker Spirituality 561
- Index of Names 579
- Index of Subjects 589
- List of Contributors 599
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- The Editors’ Preface V
- Contents VII
- 0 Introduction 1
-
Part I: Definitions, Backgrounds, Contexts
- 1 Antebellum Period and Romanticism: Definitions and Demarcations 9
- 2 Antebellum Literary Culture: The Institutions of Romanticism 33
- 3 Transnational Dimensions of Romanticism 55
- 4 American Romanticism and Religion 81
- 5 Romanticism and European Philosophy, or “Idealism As It Appears in 1842” 119
-
Part II: Intellectual, Spiritual, and Political Debates
- 6 Romanticism and Democracy 143
- 7 Romanticism and Social Reform 163
- 8 American Romanticism and Esotericism 185
- 9 America as Interior Space: Artificial Landscapes and the Modernization of Literature in Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Fiction 207
-
Part III: Contestations of Authorship and Genre
- 10 Authorship as Profession and the Uses of Genre in Antebellum America 229
- 11 Poet-Prophets and Seers: American Romanticism, Authorship, and Literary Institutions 249
- 12 Life Writing and Romantic Expressivism 269
- 13 The Fireside and Sentimental Poets 293
-
Part IV: Close Readings
- 14 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature (1836): American Romantic “Manifesto” 313
- 15 Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845): Romanticism and (Proto)Feminism 335
- 16 The Continuous Creation of Walden 355
- 17 Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) 375
- 18 Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and the Historical Imagination in American Romanticism 389
- 19 Romanticism and History: Göttingen and George Bancroft’s History of the United States (1834) 415
- 20 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and the Politics of Sentimentalism 435
- 21 Myth and Mythmaking in the Douglass Circle 453
- 22 “The Soul Selects Her Own Society”: Emily Dickinson’s Poetry and the Creation of the Self 477
- 23 The Great Psalm of the Republic: Walt Whitman’s Democratic Poetics 495
-
Part V: Reception Histories
- 24 Transcendentalist Legacies in American Philosophy 517
- 25 Rethinking Gender in Antebellum American Literature 537
- 26 “In the Woods We Return to Reason and Faith”: American Romanticism, Environmentalism, and Seeker Spirituality 561
- Index of Names 579
- Index of Subjects 589
- List of Contributors 599