All the Devils Are Here
American Romanticism and Literary Influence
1st Edition
Published on 5. April 2024
324 pages
978-0-8139-5103-4 (ISBN)
Description
The English literary influence on classic American novelists' depictions of gender, sexuality, and race
With All the Devils Are Here, the literary scholar David Greven makes a signal contribution to the growing list of studies dedicated to tracing threads of literary influence. Herman Melville's, Nathaniel Hawthorne's, and James Fenimore Cooper's uses of Shakespeare and Milton, he finds, reflect not just an intertextual relationship between American Romanticism and the English tradition but also an ongoing engagement with gender and sexual politics.
Greven limns the effect of Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing on Hawthorne's exploration of patriarchy, and he shows how misogyny in King Lear informed Melville's evocation of "the step-mother world" of orphaned men in Moby-Dick. Throughout, Greven focuses particularly on male authors' treatment of femininity, arguing that the figure of woman functions for them as a multivalent signifier for artistic expression. Ultimately, Greven demonstrates the ambitions of these writers to comment on the history of the Western tradition and the future of art from their unique positions as Americans.
With All the Devils Are Here, the literary scholar David Greven makes a signal contribution to the growing list of studies dedicated to tracing threads of literary influence. Herman Melville's, Nathaniel Hawthorne's, and James Fenimore Cooper's uses of Shakespeare and Milton, he finds, reflect not just an intertextual relationship between American Romanticism and the English tradition but also an ongoing engagement with gender and sexual politics.
Greven limns the effect of Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing on Hawthorne's exploration of patriarchy, and he shows how misogyny in King Lear informed Melville's evocation of "the step-mother world" of orphaned men in Moby-Dick. Throughout, Greven focuses particularly on male authors' treatment of femininity, arguing that the figure of woman functions for them as a multivalent signifier for artistic expression. Ultimately, Greven demonstrates the ambitions of these writers to comment on the history of the Western tradition and the future of art from their unique positions as Americans.
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David Greven is Professor of English at the University of South Carolina and the author of The Fragility of Manhood: Hawthorne, Freud, and the Politics of Gender.
Content
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Intertextual Image
- 1. The Stranger Maiden: The Last of the Mohicans, Shakespeare, and Milton
- 2. Incest and Intertextuality: The House of the Seven Gables and Milton
- 3. "To Veil Full Purpose": The Blithedale Romance and Shakespeare
- 4. Survivors and Stepmothers: Moby-Dick and King Lear
- 5. "Faltering in the Fight": Pierre and Hamlet
- 6. "A Jewish Aspect": The Marble Faun and The Merchant of Venice
- Epilogue: Douglass and Influence
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
