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The American Classics: A Personal Essay by Denis Donoghue

The American Classics: A Personal Essay

by Denis Donoghue
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Book cover type: Hardcover
  • ISBN13: 9780300107814
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • Subject: N/A
  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Publisher Imprint: Yale University Press
  • Publication Date:
  • Pages: 304
  • Original Price: GBP 46.0
  • Language: English
  • Edition: N/A
  • Item Weight: 445 grams
  • BISAC Subject(s): American / General

An eminent literary critic explores five American classics

How is a classic book to be defined? How much time must elapse before a work may be judged a "classic"? And among all the works of American literature, which deserve the designation? In this provocative new book, Denis Donoghue answers these questions. He presents his own short list of "relative" classics, works whose appeal may not be universal but which nonetheless have occupied an important place in our culture for more than a century. These books have survived the abuses of time--neglect, contempt, indifference, willful readings, excesses of praise, and hyperbole.

Donoghue bestows the term classic on just five American works: Melville's Moby-Dick, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau's Walden, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Examining each in individual chapters, he discusses how the writings have been received and interpreted, and he offers his own contemporary readings, suggesting, for example, that in the post-9/11 era, Moby-Dick may be rewardingly read as a revenge tragedy. Donoghue extends an irresistible invitation to open the pages of these American classics again, demonstrating with wit and acuity how very much they have to say to us now.

Denis Donoghue is University Professor and Henry James Professor of English and American Letters at New York University. He is the author of The Practice of Reading and Words Alone: The Poet T. S. Eliot, published by Yale University Press.

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