Emerson's Ghosts

Reviews / Votes

Emerson's Ghosts uses the beacon of America's exemplary intellectual to cast sharp new light on the tragic careers of later American scholars. Its case studies embrace both public intellectuals and professors who helped to define what we do when we do American Studies. Deeply researched, eloquently written, and without cant, this book establishes Randall Fuller as someone to hear more from. * Jonathan Arac, Mellon Professor of English, U of Pittsburgh * Randall Fuller presents a lucid, persuasive, and concise analysis of Emerson's political and literary maturation and his recognition of the creative, and potentially liberating, tensions between thought and action, language and reality, aesthetics and history. His illuminating reading of Emerson's "The American Scholar," demonstrates why he believes that essay has structured the fields of American literary criticism and American studies and inspired every generation of Americanists. In careful studies of the work of Van Wyck Brooks, F.O Mattthiessen, Perry Miller, and Sacvan Bercovitch, and others, Fuller shows how critics have interpreted Emerson and applied his thought and belief in the potential of literature to shape and change American culture and society. This is an important and exciting accomplishment. * Emory Elliott, Distinguished Professor of English, University of California, Riverside * In Emerson's Ghosts Randall Fuller remaps American criticism, showing persuasively how Emerson has haunted Americanist critics with his vision of a public intellectual who can speak with authority and influence to his culture. Emerson's "scholar" offered a divided culture a promise of unity and just purpose, an achievement that critics such as Van Wyck Brooks, F. O. Matthiessen, Perry Miller and Sacvan Bercovitch have both distrusted and desired. Emerson's Ghosts is an important contribution to Emerson studies, and a perceptive identification of one of the most influential lines of analysis of United States culture as a whole. * David M. Robinson, author of Emerson and the Conduct of Life *