In The School of Hawthorne, Brodhead uses Hawthorne as a prime example of how literary traditions are made, not born. Under Brodhead's scrutiny, the Hawthorne tradition opens out onto a wide array of subjects, many of which have received little previous attention. He offers a detailed account of Hawthorne's life in American letters, showing how authors as varied as Melville, Howells, James, and Faulkner have learned from Hawthorne's model while all the while changing the terms in which he has been read. As he traces Hawthorne's continued life among his heirs, Brodhead also reflects on the ways in which writers receive and resist official tradition, how their work is conditioned by the institutionalized pasts that surround them, and how they go about creating new traditions to counter existing ones. An important contribution to literary history, The School of Hawthorne also establishes new ways in which literary history itself can be understood.
Industry Reviews
"[A] monumental study of literary influence....Lucid and superbly written."--The Henry James Review
"Brodhead...proves here once again that he is a brilliant reader and a brilliant writer. In fact, one is almost inclined to distrust a prose so consistently and simultaneously dense and lucid and so studded with witty and wise phrases and sentences....A joy to read [and] an important and enduring contribution to the study of American literature and culture."--The New England Quarterly
"An excellent and timely book....What Brodhead brings to his discussion is an admirable responsibility to previous scholarship and a freshness of approach informed by his historical grasp of the issues of canonicity."--American Literature
"A sensitive, provocative, and intelligent study which should be required reading for any students of Hawthorne, of nineteenth-century American fiction, or of those elusive entities, literary canons and traditions....Put School of Hawthorne on your bookshelf next to Matthiessen, Levin, and Chase. It belongs there."--Southern Humanities Review
"Brodhead writes beautiful prose, learned and discursive, yet at the same time admirably lucid and crisp. His work makes some indispensable contributions to the understanding of American literary history that ought to be of great importance to anyone seriously concerned with the subject."--Lawrence Buell, Oberlin College
"[A] monumental study of literary influence....Lucid and superbly written."--The Henry James Review
"Brodhead...proves here once again that he is a brilliant reader and a brilliant writer. In fact, one is almost inclined to distrust a prose so consistently and simultaneously dense and lucid and so studded with witty and wise phrases and sentences....A joy to read [and] an important and enduring contribution to the study of American literature and culture."--The New England Quarterly
"An excellent and timely book....What Brodhead brings to his discussion is an admirable responsibility to previous scholarship and a freshness of approach informed by his historical grasp of the issues of canonicity."--American Literature
"A sensitive, provocative, and intelligent study which should be required reading for any students of Hawthorne, of nineteenth-century American fiction, or of those elusive entities, literary canons and traditions....Put School of Hawthorne on your bookshelf next to Matthiessen, Levin, and Chase. It belongs there."--Southern Humanities Review
"Brodhead writes beautiful prose, learned and discursive, yet at the same time admirably lucid and crisp. His work makes some indispensable contributions to the understanding of American literary history that ought to be of great importance to anyone seriously concerned with the subject."--Lawrence Buell, Oberlin College
"A model of a new sort of literary history, alive to the way that a classic author is continually remade by the readers and writers who fit him to their own needs."--Lawrence Lipking, Northwestern University
"Both traditionalists and 'canon-busters' will find Brodhead's richly informaive study a helpful guide in understanding why we sometimes quarrel about what authors to commend."--Nineteenth-Century Literature
"A very good addition to Hawthorne criticism as well as to the theory of how literary tradition is made and remade." -- Choice
"This is an extraordinary book -- original, insightful, superbly written, and absolutely convincing. It ranks with the very best books I've ever read on American literature and culture....Like Hawthorne, Brodhead's wonderful book is one we will want to return to again and again."--Studies in Short Fiction
