The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Poetry (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

Cambridge University Press, 12/1/2011
EAN 9780521145800, ISBN10: 0521145805

Paperback, 310 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm
Language: English

This Companion is the first critical collection of its kind devoted solely to American poetry of the nineteenth century. It covers a wide variety of authors, many of whom are currently being rediscovered. A number of anthologies in the recent past have been devoted to the verse of groups such as Native Americans, African-Americans and women. This volume offers essays covering these groups as well as more familiar figures such as Dickinson, Whitman, Longfellow and Melville. The contents are divided between broad topics of concern such as the poetry of the Civil War or the development of the 'poetess' role and articles featuring specific authors such as Edgar Allan Poe or Sarah Piatt. In the past two decades a growing body of scholarship has been engaged in reconceptualizing and re-evaluating this largely neglected area of study in US literary history - this Companion reflects and advances this spirit of revisionism.

Introduction Kerry Larson
Part I. Mandates, Movements, and Manifestos
1. The reception of nineteenth-century American poetry Mary Louise Kete
2. American Indian poetry in the nineteenth century Robert Dale Parker
3. The poet as poetess Virginia Jackson
4. Transcendental poetics Stephen Cushman
5. Slavery and its metrics Max Cavitch
6. Weathering the news in US Civil War poetry Eliza Richards
7. The 'twilight of the poets' in the era of American realism, 1875–1900 Elizabeth Renker
Part II. Individual Authors
8. Longfellow's ambivalence Stephen Burt
9. Sarah Piatt's grammar of convention and the conditions of authorship Jessica Roberts
10. Poe and Southern poetry Jack Kerkering
11. The color line
James Monroe Whitfield and Albery Allson Whitman Ivy Wilson
12. Colonial violence and poetic transcendence in Whitman's 'Song of Myself' Donald Pease
13. Emily Dickinson's 'turban'd seas' Cristanne Miller
Selected guide to further reading.