The Veracious Imagination: Essays on American History, Literature, and Biography

By Cushing Strout

Book Overview

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0819561363
• ISBN13: 9780819561367
• Release Date: August 1985
• Publisher: Wesleyan
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Profound and passionate scholarship at the highest level

These essays are the work of arguably one of the great American scholars of our time. Cushing Strout is a man of immense and diverse learning. His writing has a grace , intelligence and eloquence which moves deeply. He is at home in diverse worlds, and makes of those diverse worlds, history, biography, literature, art and architecture integral readings in the world of the mind. Known first of all for his pioneering study on Becker and Beard's economic readings of Constitutional History, he throughout his scholarly life has extended his range of knowledge and interest. Perhaps the figure closest to him and one he has written with great insight is William James. In his remarkable essay ' The Unfinished Arch' Strout showed how the one element and area missing in the great American psychologist and philosopher's work was a deep reading of history. The world of interests displayed in these essays is very broad . Among the themes he has written about with most insightfulness are the relation of the makers of Culture in the New World to their heritage in the Old, the practice and theory of psycho- history, the connection between Literature, Politics and History. Never having looked to reveal a single systematic theory of how everything connects with everything else , he has rather found and made profound truths through celebration of life's variety in truth . Both as a scholar and a writer Professor Strout has always shown t a real feeling for narrative. His scholarly essays make the word of the mind into stories which are suspenseful and dramatic. This collection of essays mirrors the mind of this great scholar, and is a true representation of his work. It could not possibly be more highly recommended . (...)