The Regenerate Lyric: Theology and Innovation in American Poetry

by Elisa New

In her book The Regenerate Lyric, Elisa New presents a major revision of the accepted historical account of Emerson as the source of the American poetic tradition. New challenges the majority opinion that Emerson not only overthrew New England religious orthodoxy but founded a poetic tradition that fundamentally renounced that orthodoxy in favor of a secular, Romantic approach. She contends that Emerson's reinvention of the religion as a species of poetry is tested and found wanting by the very poetic innovators whom Emerson addressed and that a counter-tradition is evident in his major heirs--Whitman, Dickinson, Crane, Stevens, Frost, and Lowell. Indeed, Emerson's own poetry failed in many ways to live up to his views and instead revealed an inherent paradox: that coopting of religion by a poetic theory alienates religion from its life principle--theology--and disables the poem as well.

290 pages, Hardcover

First published May 28, 1993

Reviews

[Jamey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent book in the galaxy of books created by the thousand students of the genius Allen Grossman, who for almost four decades was the Paul Proswimmer Professor of Poetry and Poetic Structures at Brandeis University.