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Home as Found

Authority and Genealogy in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Eric J. Sundquist

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Originally published in 1979. Eric Sundquist takes four representative writers—James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville—and considers the way in which each grapples with the crucial issues of genealogy and authority in his works. From all four a common pattern emerges: the desire to revolt against the past is countered by the need to invoke or even repeat it. Sundquist's approach to the texts is psychoanalytic, but he does not attempt a clinical dissection of each writer; rather, he determines how personal crisis became material for engaging with...

Originally published in 1979. Eric Sundquist takes four representative writers—James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville—and considers the way in which each grapples with the crucial issues of genealogy and authority in his works. From all four a common pattern emerges: the desire to revolt against the past is countered by the need to invoke or even repeat it. Sundquist's approach to the texts is psychoanalytic, but he does not attempt a clinical dissection of each writer; rather, he determines how personal crisis became material for engaging with larger questions of social and literary crisis.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
238
ISBN
9781421430607
Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. "The Home of My Childhood"
Incest and Imitation in Cooper's Home as Found
Chapter 2. "Plowing Homeward"
Cultivation and Grafting in Thoreau and the Week
Chapter 3. "The

Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. "The Home of My Childhood"
Incest and Imitation in Cooper's Home as Found
Chapter 2. "Plowing Homeward"
Cultivation and Grafting in Thoreau and the Week
Chapter 3. "The Home of the Dead"
Representation and Speculation in Hawthorne and The House of the Seven Gables
Chapter 4. "At Home in His Words"
Parody and Parricide in Melville's Pierre
Notes
Index

Author Bio
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Eric J. Sundquist

Eric J. Sundquist teaches English at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Home as Found: Authority and Genealogy in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and editor of American Realism: New Essays.