Gander, Catherine
(2010)
Muriel Rukeyser, America, and the "Melville Revival".
Journal of American Studies, 44 (4).
pp. 759-775.
ISSN 0021-8758
Abstract
Whilst Muriel Rukeyser's poetic affinity with Walt Whitman is generally acknowledged, the close relation of her work and poetic sensibility to the thought and writing of
Herman Melville has somehow gone relatively unnoticed, and almost wholly unexamined. In
1918, Van Wyck Brooks called for the creation of a usable past that would energize America
by recasting its cultural tradition. His plea addressed the need to rebuild a national heritage via
the rediscovery of culturally "great" figures. By the late 1930s, many scholars and writers had
answered the call, and the new discipline of American studies was beginning to take shape,
aided by a reclamation of one of the country's greatest, most neglected, writers - Herman
Melville. This was also the period in which Rukeyser "came of age"; a time when political and
international conflicts and economic crises generated both the stark, documentary representation of present social realities and the drive to retrieve or reconstruct a more golden age that
might mobilize a dislocated nation. The following article examines the importance of Melville
to Rukeyser's work, and situates her within the "Melville revival" as an important figure in the
movement throughout the first half of the twentieth century to reconstruct an American
cultural character.
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