Screen LibraryThe Cambridge companion to the literature of the American Renaissance /
"The American Renaissance has been a foundational concept in American literary history for nearly a century. The phrase connotes a period, as well as an event, an iconic turning point in the growth of a national literature and a canon of texts that would shape American fiction, poetry, and orat...
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| Published: |
Cambridge University Press,
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| Publisher Address: | Cambridge, United Kingdom : |
| Publication Dates: | 2018. |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Series: |
Cambridge companions to ...
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| Summary: |
"The American Renaissance has been a foundational concept in American literary history for nearly a century. The phrase connotes a period, as well as an event, an iconic turning point in the growth of a national literature and a canon of texts that would shape American fiction, poetry, and oratory for generations. F.O. Matthiessen coined the term in 1941 to describe the years 1850-1855, which saw the publications of major writings by Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. This companion takes up the concept of the American Renaissance and explores its origins, meaning, and longevity. Essays by distinguished scholars move chronologically from the formative reading of American Renaissance authors to the careers of major figures ignored by Matthiessen, including Stowe, Douglass, Harper, and Longfellow. This volume uses the best of current literary studies to illuminate an era that reaches far beyond the Civil War and continues to shape our understanding of American literature"--Back cover. |
| Carrier Form: | xvii, 251 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 242-244) and index. |
| ISBN: |
9781108431088 1108431089 9781108420914 1108420915 |
| Index Number: | PS201 |
| CLC: | I712.064 |
| Call Number: | I712.064/C178 |
| Contents: |
List of figures -- Notes on contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Chronology -- Introduction: the very idea of an American Renaissance / Into the Renaissance. Reading the American Renaissance in a Pennsylvania library / Cooper, Simms, and the boys of summer / The trouble with the Gothic: Poe, Lippard, and the poetics of critique / Emerson and Hawthorne; or, locating the American Renaissance / Cosmopolite at home: global Longfellow / Rethinking the Renaissance. Sins of the rising generation: religion and the American Renaissance / Uncle Tom's Cabin and the struggle over meaning: from slavery to race / The (im)possibilities of Indianness: George Copway and the problem of representativity / The poetess at work / Fern, Warner, and the work of sentimentality / Melville: the ocean and the city / Beyond the Renaissance. Whitman, in and out of the American Renaissance / A Renaissance-self: Frederick Douglass and the art of remaking / Frances Ellen Watkins Harper "In the situation of Ishmael" / The corner-stones of Heaven: science comes to concord / War and the Renaissance / Further reading -- Index. |