American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation
Caleb Crain
Abstract
This book weaves together literary criticism and historical narrative to describe the strong friendships between men that supported and inspired some of America's greatest writing—the Gothic novels of Charles Brockden Brown, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the novels of Herman Melville. The book traces the genealogy of these friendships through a series of stories. A dapper English spy inspires a Quaker boy to run away from home. Three Philadelphia gentlemen conduct a romance through diaries and letters in the 1780s. Flighty teenager Charles Brockden Brown metamorphoses into a horror no ... More
Keywords: American literature, literary criticism, friendships, Charles Brockden Brown, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Margaret Fuller, feelings
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2001 | Print ISBN-13: 9780300083323 |
| Published to Yale Scholarship Online: October 2013 | DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300083323.001.0001 |
