American sympathy [[electronic resource] ] : men, friendship, and literature in the new nation / / Caleb Crain

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910452232103321
• Autore: Crain Caleb
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New Haven, : Yale University Press, c2001
• ISBN: 1-281-72284-7; 9786611722845; 0-300-13367-7
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (1 online resource (x, 310 p.) ) : ill
• Disciplina: 810.9/352041
• Soggetti: American literature - Male authors - History and criticism; Men in literature; American literature - 19th century - History and criticism; American literature - 1783-1850 - History and criticism; Male friendship - United States - History; Male friendship in literature; Sympathy in literature; Electronic books.
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 271-305) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: In the pear grove : the romance of Leander, Lorenzo, and Castalio -- The decomposition of Charles Brockden Brown : sympathy in Brown's letters -- The transformation, the self devoted, and the dead recalled : sympathy in Brown's fiction -- The unacknowledged tie : young Emerson and the love of men -- Too good to be believed : Emerson's "Friendship" and the Samaritans -- The heart ruled out : Melville's Palinode.
• Sommario/riassunto: "A friend in history," Henry David Thoreau once wrote, "looks like some premature soul." And in the history of friendship in early America, Caleb Crain sees the soul of the nation's literature. In a sensitive analysis that weaves together literary criticism and historical narrative, Crain describes the strong friendships between men that supported and inspired some of America's greatest writing--the Gothic novels of ; Charles Brockden Brown, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the novels of Herman Melville. He traces the genealogy of these friendships through a series of stories. A dapper English spy inspires a Quaker boy to run away from home. Three Philadelphia gentlemen conduct a romance through diaries and letters in the 1780's. Flighty teenager Charles Brockden Brown metamorphoses into a horror novelist by treating his friends as his literary guinea pigs. Emerson exchanges glances with a Harvard classmate but sacrifices his crush on the altar of literature--a decision Margaret Fuller invites him to reconsider two decades later. Throughout this engaging book, Crain demonstrates the many ways in which the struggle to commit feelings to paper informed the shape and texture of American literature.