Beneath the American Renaissance: the subversive imagination in the age of Emerson and Melville

Abstract

INTRODUCTION PART I GOD'S BOW, MAN'S ARROWS: RELIGION, REFORM, AND AMERICAN LITERATURE 1. The New Religious Style 2. The Reform Impulse and the Paradox of Immoral Didacticism 3. The Transcendentalists, Whitman, and Popular Reform 4. Hawthorne and the Reform Impulse 5. Melville's Whited Sepulchres PART II: PUBLIC POISON: SENSATIONALISM AND SEXUALITY 6. The Sensational Press and the Rise of Subversive Literature 7. The Erotic Imagination 8. Poe and Popular Irrationalism 9. Hawthorne's Cultural Demons 10. Melville's Ruthless Democracy 11. Whitman's Transfigured Sensationalism PART III: OTHER AMAZONS: WOMEN'S RIGHTS, WOMEN'S WRONGS, AND THE LITERARY IMAGINATION 12. Types of American Womanhood 13. Hawthorne's Heroines 14. The American Women's Renaissance and Emily Dickinson PART IV THE GROTESQUE POSTURE POPULAR HUMOR AND THE AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE STYLE 15. The Carnivalization of American Language 16. Transcendental Wild Oats 17. Whitman's Poetic Humor 18. Stylized Laugher in Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville EPILOGUE RECONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM: LITERARY THEORY AND LITERARY HISTORY NOTES INDEX