In Respect to Egotism : Studies in American Romantic Writing (Paperback)

Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Writing, reading, Romanticism; 1. 'Where…Is this singular career to terminate?': Bewildered pilgrims in early American fiction; 2. 'Where there is no vision, the people perish…': Prophets and Pariahs in the Forest of the New World; 3. Poe: Romantic centre, critical margin; 4. Emerson: experiments in self-creation; 5. Hawthorne: 'The obscurest man of letters in America'; 6. Thoreau's self-perpetuating artefacts; 7. Melville: Romantic cock-and-bull; or, the great art of telling the truth; 8. Douglass and Stowe: scriptures of the redeemed self; 9. Whitman: 'Take me as I am or not at all…'; Interchapter: Walt and Emily; 10. Dickinson's 'Celestial vail': snowbound in self-consciousness; Notes; Index.