Division and Imagined Unity in the American Renaissance

The Seamless Whole

Nonfiction, Entertainment, Drama, Anthologies, History, Americas, United States, 19th Century
Cover of the book Division and Imagined Unity in the American Renaissance by Shawn Thomson, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Shawn Thomson ISBN: 9781683931102
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Publication: November 15, 2017
Imprint: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Language: English
Author: Shawn Thomson
ISBN: 9781683931102
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Publication: November 15, 2017
Imprint: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Language: English

In examining the era’s multivalent tropes of seams and seamlessness, Thomson provides an innovative understanding of the interplay between division and unity in the thought, culture, and literature of the American Renaissance. New insights are offered on works by major authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Solomon Northup, Harriet Jacobs, and Elizabeth Stoddard, along with marginal figures. Thomson expands the canon by recovering the unknown authors Charles Edward Anthon and John S. Sauzade and recognizing their works as vital to the American Renaissance.
Taking the 1844 display of the Holy Tunic at the Cathedral of Treves as its point of departure, Thomson sheds light on the controversy of the seamless garment in the New England press and explores its transmutation in Anthon’s Pilgrimage to Treves, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Dickinson’s poetry, and Melville’s major novels. In excavating seamlessness as a cultural artifact of the American Renaissance, Thomson pursues a cultural studies approach to the fabric of antebellum life. Thomson reads the seams of material culture to reveal the meaning of the dressing gown and the keepsake in Dickinson’s and Stoddard’s lives and letters. Thomson positions Sauzade’s Dickensian novel The Spuytenduyvel Chronicle as one of the first great works of the American metropolis and explores the spiritual-material dichotomy of the slave narratives of Douglass, Jacobs, and Northup. This book further reassesses the bitter literary rivalry between Melville and George Washington Peck, re-conceptualizes Melville the author through his relationship to the divided nation, and illuminates his failed idealism as a literary artist in Pierre. Thomson’s approach to the interrelationship of material culture, technology, and the modes of literary production creates a new sense of the American Renaissance as a paradoxical seamless whole wherein its seams are exposed for all to see.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In examining the era’s multivalent tropes of seams and seamlessness, Thomson provides an innovative understanding of the interplay between division and unity in the thought, culture, and literature of the American Renaissance. New insights are offered on works by major authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Solomon Northup, Harriet Jacobs, and Elizabeth Stoddard, along with marginal figures. Thomson expands the canon by recovering the unknown authors Charles Edward Anthon and John S. Sauzade and recognizing their works as vital to the American Renaissance.
Taking the 1844 display of the Holy Tunic at the Cathedral of Treves as its point of departure, Thomson sheds light on the controversy of the seamless garment in the New England press and explores its transmutation in Anthon’s Pilgrimage to Treves, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Dickinson’s poetry, and Melville’s major novels. In excavating seamlessness as a cultural artifact of the American Renaissance, Thomson pursues a cultural studies approach to the fabric of antebellum life. Thomson reads the seams of material culture to reveal the meaning of the dressing gown and the keepsake in Dickinson’s and Stoddard’s lives and letters. Thomson positions Sauzade’s Dickensian novel The Spuytenduyvel Chronicle as one of the first great works of the American metropolis and explores the spiritual-material dichotomy of the slave narratives of Douglass, Jacobs, and Northup. This book further reassesses the bitter literary rivalry between Melville and George Washington Peck, re-conceptualizes Melville the author through his relationship to the divided nation, and illuminates his failed idealism as a literary artist in Pierre. Thomson’s approach to the interrelationship of material culture, technology, and the modes of literary production creates a new sense of the American Renaissance as a paradoxical seamless whole wherein its seams are exposed for all to see.

More books from Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Cover of the book The Coordinated Management of Meaning by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book Poetic Memory by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book Cruelty and Desire in the Modern Theater by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book Love in the Afterlife by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book Mary Norton of New Jersey by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book Sentimentalism in Nineteenth-Century America by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book Father–Daughter Incest in Twentieth-Century American Literature by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book The Unruly Tongue in Early Modern England by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book From Ecclesiastes to Simone Weil by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book Marriage and Land Law in Shakespeare and Middleton by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book The Life of Catalina de Erauso, the Lieutenant Nun by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book Selected Writings and Speeches of James E. Shepard, 1896–1946 by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book The Brave Men of Company A by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book The Lure of Hope by Shawn Thomson
Cover of the book Enter the Undead Author by Shawn Thomson
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy