
Reading Reality
In the early 1800s, American critics warned about the danger of literature as a distraction from reality. Later critical accounts held that American literature during the antebellum period was idealistic and that literature grew more realistic after the horrors of the Civil War. By focusing on three leading American authors—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson— Reading Reality ch...
In the early 1800s, American critics warned about the danger of literature as a distraction from reality. Later critical accounts held that American literature during the antebellum period was idealistic and that literature grew more realistic after the horrors of the Civil War. By focusing on three leading American authors—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson— Reading Reality ch...