The School of Hawthorne [Paperback]

InThe School of Hawthorne, Brodhead uses Hawthorne as a prime example of how literary traditions are made, not born. Under Brodhead's scrutiny, the Hawthorne tradition opens out onto a wide array of subjects, many of which have received little previous attention. He offers a detailed account of Hawthorne's life in American letters, showing how authors as varied as Melville, Howells, James, and Faulkner have learned from Hawthorne's model while all the while changing the terms in which he has been read. As he traces Hawthorne's continued life among his heirs, Brodhead also reflects on the ways in which writers receive and resist official tradition, how their work is conditioned by the institutionalized pasts that surround them, and how they go about creating new traditions to counter existing ones. An important contribution to literary history,The School of Hawthornealso establishes new ways in which literary history itself can be understood.

[A] monumental study of literary influence....Lucid and superbly written. --The Henry James Review

Brodhead...proves here once again that he is a brilliant reader and a brilliant writer. In fact, one is almost inclined to distrust a prose so consistently and simultaneously dense and lucid and so studded with witty and wise phrases and sentences....A joy to read [and] an important and enduring contribution to the study of American literature and culture. --The New England Quarterly

An excellent and timely book....What Brodhead brings to his discussion is an admirable responsibility to previous scholarship and a freshness of approach informed by his historical grasp of the issues of canonicity. --American Literature

A sensitive, provocative, and intelligent study which should be required reading for any students of Hawthorne, of nineteenth-century American fiction, or of those elusive entities, literary canons and traditions....PutSchooll+