What American Renaissance? The Gendered Genealogy of a Critical Discourse

Abstract

Since “American renaissance” criticism emerged in 1876, it has derogated women's writings while idealizing men's, despite its shifting definitions of period, canon, and literary standards. My genealogy of the critical discourse of renaissance details ways that this criticism has denied literary value to women writers, especially at historical moments of women's increased publicity and apparent gains of power, thereby helping to maintain larger gender and racial hierarchies. Because of this tradition, I argue, the renaissance discourse is inadequate to current efforts to reenvision United States literary history and to a democratic culture.