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In Emily Dickinson: The Poet on the Second Story Professor Jerome
Loving provides an intuitive and 'interiorized' reading of the
poet's most important works. Using biographical matters as a frame
for his interpretations, Loving demonstrates how Dickinson's life
is bound up with any series reading of her work. Literally,
Dickinson wrote on the second storey of her father's house, but
Loving argues that she also used that 'story' (or art) as both a
retreat from the transitory nature of life and as a way of
experiencing life in what might be termed the 'subjunctive' instead
of the 'imperative'. Her persona, therefore, is as disembodied in
the poems as was the reclusive poet to visitors to the Amherst
'Homestead'. Loving attempts to show that the voice we hear in the
poems is that of the 'mind alone', as Dickinson herself said,
'without corporeal friend'. Of interest to students and scholars of
American literature, this critical study will also interest more
general readers who enjoy Dickinson's poetry.
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Leaves of Grass (Paperback)
Walt Whitman; Edited by Jerome Loving
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R282
R233
Discovery Miles 2 330
Save R49 (17%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Whitman is today regarded as America's Homer or Dante, and his work
the touchstone for literary originality in the New World. In Leaves
of Grass, he abandoned the rules of traditional poetry - breaking
the standard metred line, discarding the obligatory rhyming scheme,
and using the vernacular. Emily Dickinson condemned his sexual and
physiological allusions as `disgraceful', but Emerson saw the book
as the `most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has
yet contributed'. A century later it is his judgement of this
autobiographical vision of the vigour of the American nation that
has proved the more enduring. This is the most up-to-date edition
for student use, with full critical apparatus. ABOUT THE SERIES:
For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the
widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable
volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the
most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features,
including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful
notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further
study, and much more.
McTeague (1899) chronicles the demise of a San Francisco couple at
the end of the nineteenth century. Inspired by an actual crime that
was sensationalized in the San Francisco papers, it tells the story
of charlatan dentist McTeague, his wife Trina, and their spiralling
descent into moral corruption. Norris is often considered to be the
`American Zola', and this is one of the most purely naturalistic
American novels of the nineteenth century. With its compelling
portrayal of human nature at its most basic level, McTeague is a
gripping and passionate tale of greed, degeneration and death. It
is also one of the first major works of literature to set in
California, and it provided the story for Erich von Stroheim's
classic of the silent screen, Greed. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100
years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range
of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume
reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most
accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including
expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to
clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and
much more.
Loving finds in the lives and works of the two writers a symbiosis
of spirit that transcends the question of literary influence.
Tracing the parallel careers of Emerson and Whitman, the author
shows how each served his literary apprenticeship, moved beyond his
vocation, prospered, and, finally, declined in his literary
achievements. In both cases, Loving follows his subject from vision
to wisdom and, along the way, examines the aspects of the
relationship that have aroused controversy.
Originally published in 1982.
A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the
latest in digital technology to make available again books from our
distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These
editions are published unaltered from the original, and are
presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both
historical and cultural value.
In 1865 Walt Whitman was dismissed from his clerkship in the
Department of the Interior because Secretary James Harlan judged
Leaves of Grass indecent, unfit to be read aloud "by the evening
lamp." Most eloquent among Whitman's defenders was William Douglas
O'Connor, whose pamphlet The Good Gray Poet, a panegyric to Whitman
and an attack on literary censorship in general and Harlan in
particular, was the first of his many heroic if sometimes excessive
efforts in Whitman's behalf. A gifted polemicist and a stout though
not always judicious advocate of causes (he wrote several screeds
favoring Bacon as the author of Shakespeare's works), O'Connor
devoted much of his literary life to establishing Whitman and
Leaves of Grass in the world of American letters. Whitman
considered O'Connor his staunchest "literary believer and champion
from the first and throughout . . . for twenty-five years," and
indeed, despite a personal estrangement between the two men,
O'Connor's support of Whitman the poet never wavered. O'Connor's
own literary efforts may command little interest today, but his
championship of Whitman as a great, original American poet rendered
lasting service to literature. Appropriately, this study of his
career is complemented by carefully annotated texts of six of his
Whitman essays, including The Good Gray Poet. A complete O'Connor
bibliography is also included.
Mark Twain, who was often photographed with a cigar, once remarked
that he came into the world looking for a light. In this new
biography, published on the centennial of the writer's death,
Jerome Loving focuses on Mark Twain, humorist and quipster, and
sheds new light on the wit, pathos, and tragedy of the author of
"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." In brisk and compelling fashion,
Loving follows Twain from Hannibal to Hawaii to the Holy Land,
showing how the southerner transformed himself into a westerner and
finally a New Englander. This re-examination of Twain's life is
informed by newly discovered archival materials that provide the
most complex view of the man and writer to date.
"Jerome Loving is a major American biographer, and he has taken up
the life of a central literary figure in "The Last Titan. It is the
best biographical study of Dreiser that has yet been written.
Loving has an experienced hand, and he seems to know exactly where
to go in the life, how to make the life available to the reader,
and how to make one at least believe that this is how the great
novels--"Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy--and the other
fascinating works by Dreiser got written. Loving obviously knows
everything there is to know about Dreiser, and he has made an
elegant selection here, fashioning a life of the author that has
all the narrative momentum of a novel."--Jay Parini, author of
"Robert Frost: A Life"Jerome Loving has produced an immensely
readable, lively, detailed account of Theodore Dreiser's life,
always with one eye on Dreiser's great books. This is vivid
biography, bringing the man very much to life. The streets, the
newsrooms, the rented rooms, the yearning of the young Dreiser for
money, fame, women, good things in life, keeps reminding the reader
of Dreiser's own Carrie and Clyde."--Robert D. Richardson, Jr.,
author of "Emerson: The Mind on Fire"Jerome Loving has a real gift
for biography: he has the ability to draw both the big and the
small picture and to bring them into mutual focus. While the major
events in Dreiser's life are known, Loving brings an assortment of
new details and intelligent conjecture to this compelling story.
This will be the prevailing version of Dreiser's life."--Richard
Lehan, author of "The City in Literature: An Intellectual and
Cultural History, and editor of "Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie,
Jennie Gerhardt, Twelve Men
"Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself" is the first full-length
critical biography of Walt Whitman in more than forty years. Jerome
Loving makes use of recently unearthed archival evidence and
newspaper writings to present the most accurate, complete, and
complex portrait of the poet to date. This authoritative biography
affords fresh, often revelatory insights into many aspects of the
poet's life, including his attitudes toward the emerging urban life
of America, his relationships with his family members, his
developing notions of male-male love, his attitudes toward the
vexed issue of race, and his insistence on the union of American
states. Virtually every chapter presents material that was
previously unknown or unavailable, and Whitman emerges as never
before, in all his complexity as a corporal, cerebral, and
spiritual being. Loving gives us a new Poet of Democracy, one for
the twenty-first century. Loving brings to life the elusive early
Whitman, detailing his unhappy teaching career, typesetting jobs,
quarrels with editors, and relationships with family and friends.
He takes us through the Civil War - with Whitman's moving
descriptions of the wounded and dying he nursed, the battlegrounds
and camps he visited - demonstrating why the war became one of the
defining events of Whitman's life and poetry. Loving's account of
Whitman's relationship with Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most
complete and fascinating available. He also draws insights from new
material about Whitman's life as a civil servant, his Lincoln
lectures, and his abiding campaign to gain acceptance for what was
regarded by many as a 'dirty book.' He examines each edition of
Leaves of Grass in connection with the life and times that produced
it, demonstrating how Whitman's poetry serves as a priceless
historical document - marking such events as Grant's death, the
completion of the Washington monument, Custer's defeat, and the
Johnstown flood - at the same time that it reshapes the canon of
American literature. The most important gap in the Whitman record
is his journalism, which has never been completely collected and
edited. Previous biographers have depended on a very incomplete and
inaccurate collection. Loving has found long-forgotten runs of the
newspapers Whitman worked on and has gathered the largest
collection of his journalism to date. He uses these pieces to
significantly enhance our understanding of where Whitman stood in
the political and ideological spectra of his era. Loving tracks
down the sources of anecdotes about Whitman, how they got passed
from one biographer to another, were embellished and
re-contextualized. The result is a biography in which nothing is
claimed without a basis in the factual record. "Walt Whitman: The
Song of Himself" will be an invaluable tool for generations to
come, an essential resource in understanding "Leaves of Grass" and
its poet - who defied literary decorum, withstood condemnation, and
stubbornly pursued his own way.
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