Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  • Cited by 1
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2018
Print publication year:
2018
Online ISBN:
9781108355643

Book description

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. The volume uses the best of current literary studies, from digital humanities to psychoanalytic theory, to illuminate an era that reaches far beyond the Civil War and continues to shape our understanding of American literature.

Reviews

'The essays are consistently engaging and … address a general as well as a scholarly audience. The most successful contributions not only introduce an author (or authors) but also stake a claim. Most readers will find that the collection expands one's reading list by reminding one of the importance of authors such as William Gilmore Simms, George Lippard, and Alice Cary, whose works afford opportunities to reassess the idea of an American Renaissance.'

G. D. MacDonald Source: Choice

‘… excellent … The contributors are expert authorities on their subjects, and their footnotes indicate a robust engagement with both classic and recent works of American literary scholarship.’

John Hay Source: The New England Quarterly

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
×

Contents


Page 2 of 2



Page 2 of 2


Metrics

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.