A01=Eric J. Sundquist
American authors
American Eden
Author_Eric J. Sundquist
Category=DS
Civil War
classic American literature
democrats
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Herman Melville
House of Seven Gables
Moby Dick
nineteenth century
original sin
pure figure
The Scarlet Letter
totem meal
virgin land
Product details
- ISBN 9781421430607
- Weight: 318g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 26 Jan 2020
- Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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 larger questions of social and literary crisis.
Eric J. Sundquist teaches English at Johns Hopkins University.
