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Vital Signs
James W. Tuttleton
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Description for Vital Signs
Hardback. Nineteen essays derived from Mr. Tuttleton's long engagement with the masterworks of the American imagination, illustrating his conviction that great literature is art, not social science, and analyzing the effect of contemporary critical theory on the American canon. Num Pages: 383 pages. BIC Classification: 2ABM; DSB. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 225 x 162 x 34. Weight in Grams: 662.
James Tuttleton's literary writings in such magazines as the New Criterion, the American Scholar, and the Yale Review have earned him a reputation as one of our most trenchant critics. Here he collects twenty essays derived from his long engagement with the masterworks of the American imagination. Discussions of Hawthorne and Emerson, Howells and James, Fuller and Chopin, and Fitzgerald and Anderson, among others, are counterpointed with an analysis of the effect of contemporary critical theory on the American canon. Mr. Tuttleton scrutinizes a century and a half of great American writing from the viewpoint of literature as an art rather than as a datum of "cultural studies" He is severe with those styles of criticism that in his view drain literature of its moral and social significance, or that manipulate literature to serve an ideological agenda. The essays in Vital Signs arise from a conviction that great literature is more than mere discourse or a semiotic freeplay of figurations. In Mr. Tuttleton's view, a great poem or novel is an ontological reality, has a living presence, and is a system of "vital signs" that, from generation to generation, illuminates the world and offers alternatives that might be our own.
Product Details
Format
Hardback
Publication date
1996
Publisher
Ivan R Dee, Inc United States
Number of pages
383
Condition
New
Number of Pages
383
Place of Publication
Chicago, United States
ISBN
9781566631006
SKU
V9781566631006
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-15
About James W. Tuttleton
James W. Tuttleton, who died in November 1998, also wrote The Novel of Manners in America and edited volume one of The Works of Washington Irving for the Library of America. He was professor of English at New York University.
Reviews for Vital Signs
It is impossible to catalog all the merits of this rich book, packed as it is with tart observations, keen insights, and persuasive new readings of texts in American literature.
Wilma R. Ebbitt
Sewanee Review
Informed, tactful, and passionate.
William H. Pritchard
Times Literary Supplement
James Tuttleton is one of those rare critics who possesses both intellectual energy and generosity of the spirit...He is a critic who can be trusted.
James Seaton
The Hudson Review
Mr. Tuttleton reminds us of what once required neither apology nor defense namely, the pleasure that reading great works can bring.
Sanford Pinsker
The Wall Street Journal
The quality that sets this volume apart from others of its kind is its freshness, its sense of newness. . . .Tuttleton has brought together subjects that make a satisfying mix of such major writers as Emerson, Hawthorn, and James. . . .It is imporrible to catalog all the merits of this rich book, packed as it is with tart observations, keen insights, and persuasive new readings of texts in American literature. Professor Tuttleton's students are blessed.
Sewanee Review
This book approaches the status of an ideal literary object. Professor Tuttleton has managed to produce a luminous fusion of extensive scholarship and literary discernment. He succeeds in this because he has assimilated his learning and wears it lightly. . . .Here I find that his essays on Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald are among the most valuable I have read on those authors. His opening essay on Francis Parkman will lead many readers back to that epic American historian. . . .Even experts will learn much from these essays, and the general reader will be delighted.
National Review
Tuttleton's essays provide insights on American literature and critical developments, discussing works of notable and famous American writers from Stephen Crane to Edith Warton. Familiarity with the works of authors seleceted for critical review here will aid in an appreciation of Tuttleton's overall approach, which examines literature as an art.
Reviewer's Bookwatch
Wilma R. Ebbitt
Sewanee Review
Informed, tactful, and passionate.
William H. Pritchard
Times Literary Supplement
James Tuttleton is one of those rare critics who possesses both intellectual energy and generosity of the spirit...He is a critic who can be trusted.
James Seaton
The Hudson Review
Mr. Tuttleton reminds us of what once required neither apology nor defense namely, the pleasure that reading great works can bring.
Sanford Pinsker
The Wall Street Journal
The quality that sets this volume apart from others of its kind is its freshness, its sense of newness. . . .Tuttleton has brought together subjects that make a satisfying mix of such major writers as Emerson, Hawthorn, and James. . . .It is imporrible to catalog all the merits of this rich book, packed as it is with tart observations, keen insights, and persuasive new readings of texts in American literature. Professor Tuttleton's students are blessed.
Sewanee Review
This book approaches the status of an ideal literary object. Professor Tuttleton has managed to produce a luminous fusion of extensive scholarship and literary discernment. He succeeds in this because he has assimilated his learning and wears it lightly. . . .Here I find that his essays on Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald are among the most valuable I have read on those authors. His opening essay on Francis Parkman will lead many readers back to that epic American historian. . . .Even experts will learn much from these essays, and the general reader will be delighted.
National Review
Tuttleton's essays provide insights on American literature and critical developments, discussing works of notable and famous American writers from Stephen Crane to Edith Warton. Familiarity with the works of authors seleceted for critical review here will aid in an appreciation of Tuttleton's overall approach, which examines literature as an art.
Reviewer's Bookwatch