|
|
|
Detail Center Header Text Above Items |
|
Beneath The American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville
by David S. Reynolds
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf (1988-03-12)
ISBN: 039454448X
EAN: 9780394544489
Dewy Decimal #: 810.9003
Hardcover: 625 pages
Edition: 1st
Release Date: 1988-03-12
SKU: bttv719-8.7
Condition: New
Comments: First Edition Hardback. New book, new condition. Transparency plastic to protect dustcover. Dustmarks on upper spine. Ships same day or next in a bubble mailer. Enjoy.
|
Editorial Reviews
|
Product Description
In this landmark work, the seven great writers of the American Renaissance--Emerson, Thoreau, Writman, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Dickinson--are examined together in their cultural contexts. David Reynolds reveals how these authors broadly assimilated the themes and images of popular culture. Their classic works--among them Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Leaves of Grass, Walden, and the tales of Poe--are given strikingly original reading when viewed against the rich, often startling background of long neglected popular writings of the time. Reynolds also explores a whole lost world of sensational literature, including grisly novels, openly sold on the street, that combined intense violence with explicit eroticism. He demonstrates as well how common concerns with issues of religion, slavery, and workers' (as well as women's) rights resonate in the major writings.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Enlightening book about some of America's greatest authors
Rating  (4)
Date: 2005-02-28
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
David Reynolds presents in this book the "subversive" underpinnings of the works of some of America's greatest authors: Melville, Whitman, Hawthorne, Poe, as well as, to a lesser extent, Thoreau and Emerson. As a "fan" of these authors, I discovered many things about the context in which their writings fit, and that help better understand exactly why these authors wrote about what they did.
Reynolds is an excellent author, though the book is a bit slow-going at times (hence my 4 starts instead of 5). This is a book to be read a chapter at a time, with pauses between: each chapter is a somewhat self-contained essay that fits into the larger scope of the book.
To learn more about these great authors and this pivotal period in American literature, this book is essential.
|
|
New Perspective on American Classic Literary Tradition
Rating (4)
Date: 2000-03-18
4 out of 9 customers found this reveiw helpful
Truly well-thought, researched, and rendered. Reynolds grounds his literary analysis in a vivid sense of the transition from the Republic toward the corporate industrial era, explicating the dynamics of our vital tradition.
|
|
|
|
Detail Center Footer Text Below Items |
|
|