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Intellectual history is viewed in this book as a series of "great conversations"—dramatic dialogues in which a culture's spokesmen wrestle with the leading questions of their times. In nineteenth-century America the great argument centered about De Crèvecoeur's "new man," the American, an innocent Adam in a bright new world dissociating himself from the historic past. Mr. Lewis reveals this vital preoccupation as a pervasive, transforming ingredient of the American mind, illuminating history and theology as well as art, shaping the consciousness of lesser thinkers as fully as it shaped the giants of the age. He traces the Adamic theme in the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Henry James, and others, and in an Epilogue he exposes their continuing spirit in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, J. D. Salinger, and Saul Bellow.
Presents a visual and literary review of famous Americans
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Lewis presents an account of one of the foremost intellectual families in American history. He begins with the originator's, William James of Albany, emigration in 1789 from Ireland and concludes with the death in 1916 of the great novelist Henry James. The emphasis throughout is the family narrative and not the works produced by family members, although these are considered. The lives most detailed are those of the brothers William, the psychologist, and Henry, the novelist, along with their sister Alice, political radical and lifelong invalid. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
An insightful biography of Florence?s famous son Acclaimed biog rap her R.W.B. Lewis traces the life and complex development? emotional, artistic, philosophical?of this supreme poet-historian. Here we meet the boy who first encounters the mythic Beatrice, the lyric poet obsessed with love and death, the grand master of dramatic narrative and allegory, and his monumental search for ultimate truth in The Divine Comedy. It is in this masterpiece of self-discovery and redemption that Lewis finds Dante?s own autobiography?and the sum of all his shifting passions and epiphanies.
One of the leading critics of our time, R.W.B. Lewis, charts the career of Hart Crane's imagination-of his vision, his rhetoric, and his craft. Crane, who has heretofore been assigned a relatively minor place in American letters, emerges from this rich, dense book as one of the finest poets in our language. Mr. Lewis traces the development of the theme which runs through all of Crane’s poetry-the need for the visionary and loving transfiguration of the actual world-and claims that it is this theme which gives Crane’s poetry its extraordinary consistency. Mr. Lewis also relates Crane’s development as poet to the Anglo-American Romantic tradition and argues that Blake, Wordsworth, Keats,...
Here are the intimate letters of Edith Wharton--the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize--detailing her work, her family, her friendship with Henry James, and her passion for the American journalist Morton Fullerton. The letters reveal a remarkable, independent woman who lived life fully. Three 8-page inserts.
The first really original book on the classical period in American writing that has appeared for a long time.
Only R.W.B. Lewis-the renowned biographer and author of The City of Florence-could write so insightfully about Dante Alighieri, Florence's famous son. In Dante he traces the life and complex development-emotional, artistic, philosophical-of this supreme poet-historian, from his wanderings through Tuscan hills and splendid churches to his days as a young soldier fighting for democracy, and to his civic leadership and years of embittered exile from the city that would fiercely reclaim him a century later.Lewis reveals the boy who first encounters the mythic Beatrice, the lyric poet obsessed with love and death, the grand master of dramatic narrative and allegory, and his monumental search for ultimate truth in The Divine Comedy. It is in this masterpiece of self-discovery and redemption that Lewis finds Dante's own autobiography-and the sum of all his shifting passions and epiphanies.
James A. Grimshaw, Jr., brings together for the first time more than 350 letters exchanged by two scholars who altered the way literature is taught in this country. The selected letters focus on the development of their five major textbooks--the rationale for selections, the details involved in obtaining permissions and preparing indexes, and the demands of meeting deadlines. More important, these letters reveal their attitudes toward literature, teaching, and scholarship. Providing insight into two of the most influential literary minds of this century, these letters show two men who were deeply involved in research and writing, and who were committed to a life of travel, conversation, and ...