Writing Beyond Prophecy: Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville after the American Renaissance Book

Writing beyond Prophecy offers a new interpretation of the American Renaissance by drawing attention to a cluster of later, rarely studied works by three authors. Identifying a line of writing from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Conduct of Life to Nathaniel Hawthorne's posthumously published Elixir of Life manuscripts to Herman Melville's Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land, Martin Kevorkian demonstrates how these authors wrestled with their sense of vocational calling.

Early in their careers, these authors positioned their literary pursuits as an alternative to the ministry. By presenting a "new revelation" and a new set of "gospels" for the nineteenth century, they sought to aggressively usurp the authority of the pulpit. Later in their lives each writer came to recognize the audacity of his earlier work creating what Kevorkian characterizes as a literary aftermath. Strikingly, each author returned to the character of a young divinity student, torn by a crisis of faith and vocation. Writing beyond Prophecy gives a distinctive shape to the "late" careers of Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville and offers a cohesive account of the lingering devotion left in the wake of American Romanticism.