Beyond Romanticism

Book excerpt: This biography of American poet Frederick Goddard Tuckerman focuses on his development as both a "Romantic," whose work was influenced by Keats, Emerson, and Tennyson, and as an "anti-Romantic," in the mold of Hawthorne, Melville, and Dickinson. Using previously unexamined letters, family records, and notes by Tuckerman, Eugene England traces the poet's unique combination of Anglican rationalism, legal training, and skill in natural observation (under the tutelage of his brother Edward, a noted botanist), all of which caused him to depart from the orthodox Emersonian Romanticism in unusual and instructive ways. England examines Tuckerman's challenging resolution to basic aesthetic and epistemological dilemmas posed by Romanticism and demonstrates that his poems are a first-rate artistic achievement of continuing value. Beyond Romanticism includes a general bibliography as well as a complete bibliography of Tuckerman's writings and works about him and his poetry.