Emerson and his legacy: essays in honor of Quentin Anderson

484 Pages·1986·1.06 MB·English

by  Stephen Donadio

Emerson and His Legacy : Essays in Honor
title:
of Quentin Anderson
author: Anderson, Quentin
publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
isbn10 | asin: 0809312182
print isbn13: 9780809312184
ebook isbn13: 9780585030302
language: English
Emerson, Ralph Waldo,--1803-1882--
Criticism and interpretation, Emerson,
subject
Ralph Waldo,--1803-1882--Influence,
Anderson, Quentin,--1912-
publication date: 1986
lcc: PS1638.E4 1986eb
ddc: 814/.3
Emerson, Ralph Waldo,--1803-1882--
subject: Criticism and interpretation, Emerson,
Ralph Waldo,--1803-1882--Influence,
Anderson, Quentin,--1912-
Page ii
Page iii
Emerson And His Legacy
Essays in Honor of
Quentin Anderson
Edited by
STEPHEN DONADIO
STEPHEN RAILTON
and
ORMOND SEAVEY
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Carbondale and Edwardsville
Page iv
Copyright © 1986 by the Board of Trustees,
Southern Illinois University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Edited by Lynn de Gerenday
Designed by Quentin Fiore
Production supervised by Kathleen Giencke
"The Generation of Whitman," by Paul Zweig, is derived from WALT
WHITMAN: The Making of the Poet, by Paul Zweig. © 1984 by Paul
Zweig. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, Inc., Publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Emerson and his legacy.
Bibliography: p.
1. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 18031882Criticism and
interpretationAddresses, essays, lectures. 2. Emerson,
Ralph Waldo, 18031882InfluenceAddresses, essays,
lectures. 3. Anderson, Quentin, 1912 . I. Anderson,
Quentin, 1912 . II. Donadio, Stephen. III. Railton,
Stephen, 1948 . IV. Seavey, Ormond.
PS1638.E4 1986 814'.3 85-1763
ISBN 0-8093-1218-2
89 88 87 86 4 3 2 1
Page v
Contents
Frontispiece ii
Preface vii
1. Emerson as Itinerant 1
O S
RMOND EAVEY
2. Emerson at First: A Commentary on Nature 23
D D
ENIS ONOGHUE
3. Seeing and Saying: The Dialectic of Emerson's 48
Eloquence
S R
TEPHEN AILTON
4. English and American Traits 66
C H
ARL OVDE
5. Emerson, Poe, and the Ruins of Convention 84
S D
TEPHEN ONADIO
6. The Generation of Whitman 107
P Z
AUL WEIG
7. Over-Soul as Orgone: The Case of Wilhelm Reich 130
S M
TEVEN ARCUS
8. Talk Shows: On Reading Television 147
A F
ARON OGEL
9. Quentin Anderson, Redux 170
J B
ACQUES ARZUN
Page vi
10. The Shape of a Career: A Conversation with 181
Quentin Anderson
D T
IANA RILLING
11. The Imperial Self and the Study of American Literature 214
in the 1970s
P S
ETER HAW
Notes 227
A Bibliography of Quentin Anderson 238
T T
IMOTHY RASK
Notes on Contributors 249
Page vii
Preface
The essays in this volume continue a dialogue between two periods in
the history of American culture. The first of them took place in New
England in the quarter century before the Civil War, largely in
response to the thought of Emerson. The Second centered in New
York beginning in the 1930s, among a group of intellectuals
simultaneously concerned with the political consequences of
liberalism and of Marxism and with the imaginative implications of
modernism. In both episodes the vexing relation between politics and
literary expression has been the common concern of a distinctive
group of thinkers aware of one another's work. It has been one of the
achievements of Quentin Anderson to have maintained this dialogue
at an appropriate level of seriousness and intellectual depth. For that
reason among others these essays are dedicated to him.
American culture has not been rich in occasions in which a large view
of the contemporary human situation has been collectively at issue.
The first generation of American Puritans shared a synthesis of
intellectual preoccupations, but the centrifugal tendencies inherent in
their polity and in their geographic dispersion gradually dissolved that
early community of concerns. With the marked exceptions of
antebellum New England and mid-twentieth-century New York,
American thought has turned to fragmented specialization and
consequent mutual isolation. Many of the achievements of this
attenuated culture have been impressive, but a lack of larger resonance
can be felt in even the best of its work. (The rapid evolution of the
Fugitives from their first agrarian