Beneath the American Renaissance
Subtitle: the subversive imagination in the age of Emerson and Melville
By: David S. Reynolds.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1989
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 625
ISBN-13: 9780674065659
Copyright date: 1988
Subjects: Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 -- Contemporaries.; Melville, Herman, 1819-1891 -- Contemporaries.; American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; Popular literature -- United States -- History and criticism.; Social problems in literature.; Sensationalism in literature.; Social norms in literature.; Women in literature.
Notes: Bibliography: p. 569-604.
Includes index.
"Published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc."--T.p. verso.
Winner of the Christian Gauss Award of Phi Beta Kappa.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : The open text : American writers and their environment; title: Part one : God's bow, man's arrows : religion, reform, and American literature. The new religious style; title: The reform impulse and the paradox of immoral didacticism; title: The transcendentalists, Whitman, and popular reform; title: Hawthorne and the reform impulse; title: Part two : Public poison : sensationalism and sexuality. The sensational press and the rise of subversive literature; title: The erotic imagination; title: Poe and popular irrationalism; title: Hawthorne's cultural demons; title: Melville's ruthless democracy; title: Whitman's transfigured sensationalism; title: Part three : Other Amazons : women's rights, women's wrongs, and the literary imagination. Types of American womanhood; title: Hawthorne's heroine's; title: The American women's renaissance and Emily Dickinson; title: Part four : The grotesque posture : popular humor and the American subversive style. The carnivalization of American language; title: Transcendental wild oats; title: Whitman's poetic humor; title: Stylized laughter in Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville; title: Epilogue : Reconstructive criticism : literary theory and literary history