At Emerson's Tomb : The Politics of Classic American Literature

Representative works are interpreted in light of the two great political movements of the nineteenth century: the abolition of slavery and the women's rights movement. By reexamining Emerson, Poe, Melville, Douglass, Walt Whitman, Chopin, and Faulkner and others, Rowe assesses the degree to which major writers' attitudes toward race, class, and gender contribute to specific political reforms in nineteenth and twentieth-century American culture. 1. At Emerson's Tomb -- 2. Hamlet's Task: Emerson's Political Writings -- 3. Antebellum Slavery And Modern Criticism: Edgar Allan Poe's Pym And The Purloined Letter -- 4. A Critique Of Ideology: Herman Melville's Pierre -- 5. Between Politics And Poetics: Frederick Douglass' Narrative Of The Life Of An American Slave, Written By Himself -- 6. Reconstructing The Family: Harriet Jacobs' Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl -- 7. The Body Poetic: Walt Whitman's Drum-taps -- 8. Fatal Speculations -- Murder, Money, And Manners: Mark Twain's The Gilded Age And Pudd'nhead Wilson -- 9. The Politics Of Innocence: Henry James' The American -- 10. The Economics Of The Body: Kate Chopin's The Awakening -- 11. The African-american Voice: William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses -- 12. Revivals. John Carlos Rowe. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [253]-292) And Index. Challenges the conventional critical reading of the American poetic project as an engagement with or reaction against Emersonian thought. Rowe demonstrates how ideals of individualism, intellectualism, and otherworldiness inevitably undermine any political effectiveness that a writer may seek to achieve.