Splintered Worlds: Fragmentation and the Ideal of Diversity in the Work of Emerson, Melville, Whitma

Explores how four American writers responded to the overwhelming fragmentation of their 19th-century world by drawing on a romantic ideal of diversity. Finds that Emerson and Melville had a segmentary vision of reality, which emphasizes multiplicity and abundance; while Whitman and Dickinson had an