Robert Weisbuch, Atlantic Double-Cross: American Literature and British Influence in the Age of Emerson. Chicago UP, 1987. In Atlantic Double-Cross Robert Weisbuch applies the theories of authorial interaction developed by Harold Bloom and W. J. Bate to the Anglo-American literary relations of the mid-nineteenth century, contending that American writers of this period were "anxious" to prove their equality with (or even superiority to) contemporary British writers and attempted to do so in various ingenious ways. In an exceptionally interesting first chapter, Weisbuch employs a nervous quotation from Emerson (returned from recent visits to Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Carlyle) as the springboard for a comprehensive discussion of American writers' professional insecurities in relation to Britain. Citing numerous comments by American writers of the period, Weisbuch shows that these writers sensed a general American indebtedness to British models; that this indebtedness could not be acknowledged without embarrassment; that (for reasons of prior political and present linguistic connection) British literary achievements provoked far more jealousy in Americans than did the achievements of Continental writers; that American literature's relation to British literature was highly antagonistic; that American writers sought to compete mainly with nineteenth-century British writers (rather than older writers like Shakespeare); that individual quarrels with particular British writers exemplified a larger American quarrel with British literature--thus adding fuel to the American fire; and that the struggle of American writers with their British counterparts continued into the later nineteenth century, though reaching a peak during the American Renaissance.
