Beneath the American Renaissance, David S. Reynolds
Beneath the American Renaissance, David S. Reynolds
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Beneath the American Renaissance
The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville

Author: David S. Reynolds, Sean Wilentz

Narrator: John Lescault

Unabridged: 29 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/26/2019

Synopsis

The award-winning Beneath the American Renaissance is a classic work on American literature. It immeasurably broadens our knowledge of our most important literary period, as first identified by F.O. Matthiessen’s American Renaissance. With its combination of sharp critical insight, engaging observation, and narrative drive, it represents the kind of masterful cultural history for which David Reynolds is known. Here the major works of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Dickinson receive striking, original readings set against the rich backdrop of contemporary popular writing. Now back in print, the volume includes a new foreword by historian Sean Wilentz that reveals the book’s impact and influence. A magisterial work of criticism and cultural history, Beneath the American Renaissance will fascinate anyone interested in the genesis of America’s most significant literary epoch and the iconic figures who defined it.

About David S. Reynolds

David S. Reynolds is a distinguished professor of English and American studies at the Graduate Center and Baruch College of the City University of New York. He is the author of John Brown, Abolitionist, winner of the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award; Walt Whitman's America, winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Ambassador Book Prize; and Beneath the American Renaissance, winner of Phi Beta Kappa's Christian Gauss Award. He lives in Old Westbury, New York.

About Sean Wilentz

Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton University, is the author or editor of several books, including Chants Democratic and The Rise of American Democracy. He has also written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and other publications. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

About John Lescault

Patrick Cullen, a native of Massachusetts, is a graduate of the Catholic University of America. He lives in Washington, DC, where he works in theater.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Peter

This is a pretty interesting book about the well-trod territory of the American Renaissance writers, here defined by a big seven: Melville, Emerson, Dickinson, Whitman, Poe, Thoreau, and Hawthorne. Rather than isolated geniuses acting out against the strictures of a conventional god-fearing culture,......more

Goodreads review by George

An interesting book describes the lives of the major American authors of the 19th century and also describes the literary environment in which they developed their style. in particular penny novels and newspaper articles of the time played to the public’s interest in graphic and violent stories. Man......more

Goodreads review by Craig

Revisiting a classic of American literary criticism which reads as well now as it did when I first encountered it. Reynolds focuses on how the classical American writers reshaped popular culture in works that have usually been approached from a highbrown angle. Concentrating on Melville this time. R......more

Quotes

“An original piece of work that gives the literary canon and its contexts a good shaking.” New York Times Book Review

“A monumental revisionist study of nineteenth-century American literature that challenges both popular critical conceptions of Emerson, Whitman, Poe, et al., as well as fashionable schools of literary analysis…A tremendous work of scholarship.” Kirkus Reviews

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