The Complicity of Imagination: The American Renaissance, Contests of Authority, and Seventeenth-Century English Culture

Description

The Complicity of Imagination examines the rich and complex relationship between four nineteenth-century authors and the culture and politics of seventeenth-century England. Challenging the notion that antebellum Americans were burdened by a sense of cultural inferiority in both their thought and their writing, this 1997 study portrays an American Renaissance whose writers were deeply enough read in the literature and controversies of seventeenth-century England to appropriate its cultural artifacts for their own purposes. By exploring the broader cultural implications of intertextual relationships, this book demonstrates how literary texts participate in the artistic, political and theological tensions within American culture.

"The Complicity of Imagination provides some excellent insights into certain aspects of the American Renaissance's reception of seventeenth-century English Literature....it will prove worth the while of all those interested in the sources from which antebellum New England drew its inspiration." K.P. Van Anglen, The New England Quarterly "The Complicity of Imagination should be read by anyone who wishes to understand the seventeenth-century allusiveness built into the works of Emerson, FUller, Thoreau, and Melville." Matthew A. Fike, College Literature "The Complicity of Imagination is a refreshing look at one of the sources of the American Renaissance: seventeenth-century English literature...well-documented and thought out. This is an informed, original, and very useful study that not only places the four authors solidly within the larger English literary tradition, but also allows us to understand their literary art better than we did before." Journal of English and Germanic Philology "...thoroughly researched, well written, and genuinely compelling...This fascinating study is highly reccomended." Christianity and Literature