A01=Clark Davis
Author_Clark Davis
Category=DSBF
Category=DSK
Clark Davis
Engagement in Writing
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eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Ethical Subject
Ethics in Literature
Hawthorne's Shyness
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Political and Social Views
Politics and Literature
Romantic Truth
Romanticism
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Product details
- ISBN 9780801880988
- Weight: 408g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Aug 2005
- Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In Hawthorne's Shyness, Clark Davis offers both a challenge to current trends in American literary studies and a striking new perspective on the writing of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He proposes an alternative to recent, ideologically driven criticism, including the range of approaches under the banner of New Historicism which continue to dominate the study of American literature. Drawing on ethical theorists including Heidegger, Levinas, Davidson, and Cavell, he finds new models for the relationship between critic and author in their philosophies of engagement with the Other. While these ideas have been increasingly influential in the criticism of European literature, they have so far made fewer inroads into American letters. Davis shows how a "hermeneutics of respect" can transform our relationship to American writers and provide a new, complex understanding of authorial intention. What makes Davis's work particularly effective, however, is the close integration of his methodological argument with its application. He directly and convincingly reexamines much of the most important current scholarship on Hawthorne, carefully developing and distinguishing his own positions.
This important new reading of a central figure in American literary history, significant in its own right, also powerfully demonstrates the potential of Davis's critical approach.
Clark Davis is an associate professor of English and associate department chair at the University of Denver.
