Literary Series with Mark Scarbrough: The American Literary Renaissance Reconsidered: Whitman and Hawthorne in Conversation with Douglass and Stoddard – Library
An event every week that begins at 10:30 am on Tuesday, repeating until November 17, 2026
Tuesday mornings, September 29, 2026, through November 17, 2026, 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
In the 1940s, Harvard scholar F. O. Matthiessen reinvented U. S. literary history by resurrecting the almost forgotten writers from the years before the Civil War: Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, and Whitman (along with the still-recognized Emerson). Since then, Matthiessen’s roll call of the greats has dominated much of what we see as the move from the early Republic to the Civil War crack-up in 1861. However, Matthiessen’s scholarship omitted vast swaths of writers who didn’t fit his notion of the Transcendentalist mindset. In this literary seminar, we’ll take our initial cue from Matthiessen but work to expand his cast of authors by including other voices, thereby broadening the scope of what it meant to be a U.S. citizen in the fateful years before the chaos.
Live only. Registration is required at cornwalllibrary.org. Free, but donations are welcome.