The Transformation of Beliefs into Fictions in 19th Century New England Literature

FAIN: FA-11236-75

James H. McIntosh
Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1015)

To study the effects, in 19th century American literature, of the rapid loosening of received beliefs that accompanied the fragmentation New England Puritan culture. The study will include essays on the cultural conditions in which Emerson, Hawthorne and their successors developed; on the Emersonian self as transformed into fictional character in the work of Melville, Whitman, and Dickinson; on Dickenson's poetry as a mode of belief.