Emerson's Ghosts Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists [Paperback]

It is increasingly commonplace to find scholars who circle back to Ralph Waldo Emerson and his intellectual heirs as a way of better understanding contemporary social and aesthetic contexts. Why does Emerson's cultural legacy continue to influence writers so forcefully? In this innovative study, Randall Fuller examines the way pivotal twentieth-century critics have understood and deployed Emerson as part of their own larger projects aimed at reconceiving America. He examines previously unpublished material and original research on Van Wyck Brooks, Perry Miller, F.O. Matthiessen, and Sacvan Bercovitch along with other supporting thinkers. An engaging institutional history of American literary studies in the twentieth century,Emerson's Ghostsreveals the unexpected convergent forces that have shaped American cultural history in lasting ways.

Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1.The Haunting of American Literature
Chapter 2.Emerson in the Gilded Age
Chapter 3.How to Dismantle American Culture: Van Wyck Brooks and Oppositional Criticism
Chapter 4. F. O. Matthiessen and the Tragedy of the American Scholar
Chapter 5.Perry Miller's Errand into the Wilderness
Chapter 6.Sacvan Bercovitch as American Scholar
Chapter 7.Emerson's Ghosts
End Notes
Bibliography

Emerson's Ghostsuses the beacon of America's exemplary intellectual to cast sharp new light on the tragic careers of later American scholars. Its case studies embrace both public intellectuals and professors who helped to define what we do when we do American Studies. Deeply researched, eloquently written, and without cant, this book establishes Randall Fuller as someone to hear more from. --Jonathan Arac, University of Pittsburgh

This work will surely hold an important place in the future of Emersonl.