The American Ideal Literary History as a Worldly Activity
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr on Demand
- Publish date: 04/01/1995
Description:
This work argues that American literary scholarship enshrines a reactionary vision of history, of narrative, and of America itself. Carafiol examines the way idealist assumptions have been essential to doing American literary history and unwraps the implications of that symbiosis for current debates about the aims and methods of literary history in general. Carafiol directs his critique not only at traditional approaches to American literature but also at the mostinfluential recent efforts by New Historicists and cultural critics to revise that tradition. Reconsidering the debate between ahistorical and historical models of literary study, he argues that worksby such writers like Emerson and Thoreau subvert the claims of critics on both sides. Such writing is important, he proposes, not as timeless art or as social document, but as a voice that can speak powerfully in contemporary conversations, challenging literary critics in all fields to reconsider their critical assumptions and professional practices.
Expand description
Product notice
Returnable at the third party seller's discretion and may come without consumable supplements like access codes, CD's, or workbooks.
Seller | Condition | Comments | Price |
|
HPB-Red
Good
![]() |
$23.62
|
Ergodebooks
|
Good |
$47.48
|
|
GridFreed
New |
$74.53
|
|
Rob the Book Man
Like New
![]() |
$78.70
|

Please Wait