Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T22:45:33.941Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What American Renaissance? The Gendered Genealogy of a Critical Discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Charlene Avallone
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 112 , Issue 5 , October 1997 , pp. 1102 - 1120
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Ammons, Elizabeth. Conflicting Stories: American Women Writers at the Turn into the Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Ammons, Elizabeth, ed Critical Essays on Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston: Hall, 1980.Google Scholar
Andrews, William L “The 1850s: The First Afro-American Literary Renaissance.” Literary Romanticism in America. Ed. Andrews. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1981. 38–60.Google Scholar
Arac, Jonathan. Critical Genealogies: Historical Situations for Postmodern Literary Studies. Social Foundations of Aesthetic Forms. Ed. Edward W. Said. New York: Columbia UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Arac, Jonathan “F. O. Matthressen: Authorizing an American Renaissance.” Michaels and Pease 90–112.Google Scholar
Arroyo, Elizabeth Fortson “Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin.” Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Ed. Hine, Darlene Clark. Vol. 2. Brooklyn: Carlson, 1993. 994–99.Google Scholar
Bates, Katharine Lee. American Literature. New York: Chautauqua, 1897.Google Scholar
Baym, Nina “Early Histories of American Literature: A Chapter in the Institutution of New England.” Baym, Feminism 81–101.Google Scholar
Baym, Nina. Feminism and American Literary History: Essays. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Baym, Nina Introduction. Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-70. 2nd ed. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1993. ix-xlii.Google Scholar
Baym, Nina “Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors.” American Quarterly 33 (1981): 123–12. Rpt. in Baym, Feminism 3–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bercovitch, Sacvan Afterword. Ideology and Classic American Literature. Ed. Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen. Cambridge Studies in Amer. Lit. and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 418–41.Google Scholar
Bercovitch, Sacvan “The Ideological Context of the American Renaissance.” Forms and Functions of History in American Literature: Essays in Honor of Ursula Brumm. Ed. Fluck, Winifred et al. Berlin: Schmidt, 1981. 1–20.Google Scholar
Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Office of the Scarlet Letter. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Puritan Origins of the American Self. New Haven: Yale UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Bercovitch, Sacvan. Rites of Assent: Transformations in the Symbolic Construction of America. New York: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Bernard, Jesse. Academic Women. University Park: Penn State UP, 1964.Google Scholar
Botta, Anne C Lynch. Handbook of Universal Literature, from the Best and Latest Authorities. 1860. Boston: Riverside-Houghton, 1896.Google Scholar
Brooks, Van Wyck. The Confident Years: 1885-1915. 1952. New York: Dutton, 1955.Google Scholar
Brooks, Van Wyck. The Flowering of New England, 1815-1865. 1936. Brooks, Literature 1–550.Google Scholar
Brooks, Van Wyck. Literature in New England. Garden City, NY: Garden City, 1944.Google Scholar
Brooks, Van Wyck. New England: Indian Summer, 1865-1915. 1940. Brooks, Literature 1–557.Google Scholar
Brown, William Wells. The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements. 2nd. ed. 1863. New York: Johnson Rpt., 1968.Google Scholar
Buell, Lawrence. New England Literary Culture: From Revolution through Renaissance. Cambridge Studies in Amer. Lit. and Culture. Ed. Albert Gelpi, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Richard James “Literary Criticism in Southern Periodicals during the American Renaissance.” Critical Theory in the American Renaissance. Ed. Abel, Darrel. Hartford: Transcendental, 1969. 76–83.Google Scholar
Carafiol, Peter C., and Garvin, Harry R., eds The American Renaissance: New Dimensions. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Carby, Hazel V. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Chai, Leon. The Romantic Foundations of the American Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Cheyfitz, Eric “Matthiessen's American Renaissance: Circumscribing the Revolution.” American Quarterly 41 (1989): 341–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christian, Barbara “But What Do We Think We're Doing Anyway: The State of Black Feminist Criticism(s); or, My Version of a Little Bit of History.” Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism. Theory, and Writing by Black Women. Ed. Wall, Cheryl A. New Brunswick: Rugters UP, 1989. 58–74.Google Scholar
Clifford, Deborah Pickman. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Biography of JuliaWard Howe. Boston: Atlantic-Little, 1978.Google Scholar
Colacurcio, Michael J “The American-Renaissance Renaissance.” New England Quarterly 64 (1991): 445–44.Google Scholar
Cooper, Anna Julia. A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South. 1892. New York: Negro Univ., 1969.Google Scholar
Cott, Nancy F. The Grounding of Modern Feminism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Coultrap-McQuin, Susan. Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1990.Google Scholar
Crews, Frederick “Whose American Renaissance?” New York Review of Books 27 Oct. 1988: 68–81.Google Scholar
Davis, Thadious. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman's Life Unveiled. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Dobson, Joanne “The American Renaissance Reenvisioned.” The (Other) American Traditions: Nineteenth-Century Women Writers. Ed. Warren, Joyce W. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1993. 164–16.Google Scholar
[Du Bois, W. E. B.] “Negro Writers.” Crisis 19 (1920): 298–29.Google Scholar
duCille, Ann. The Coupling Convention: Sex, Text, and Tradition in Black Women's Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Duffus, R. L. The American Renaissance. New York: Knopf, 1928.Google Scholar
Elbert, Sarah. A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott's Place in American Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Farmer, Lydia Hoyt, ed What America Owes to Woman: The National Exposition Souvenir. Introd. Julia Ward Howe. Buffalo: Moulton, 1893.Google Scholar
[Farmer, Lydia Hoyt] “Women in Literature and Poetry.” Farmer, What America Owes 181–18.Google Scholar
Fetterley, Judith “Commentary: Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and the Politics of Recovery.” American Literary History 6 (1994): 600–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fetterley, Judith. Provisions: A Reader from Nineteenth-Century American Women. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Fetterley, Judith, and Pryse, Marjorie, eds American Women Regionalists, 1850-1910. New York: Norton, 1992.Google Scholar
Fisher, Mary. A General Survey of American Literature. Chicago: McClurg, 1899.Google Scholar
Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States. 1959. New York: Atheneum. 1970.Google Scholar
Foster, Frances Smith. Written by Herself: Literary Production by African-American Women, 1746-1892. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Frothingham, Octavius Brooks. Transcendentalism in New England: A History. New York: Putnam's, 1876.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, Margaret “American Literature: Its Position in the Present Time, and Prospects for the Future.” 1846. Myerson, Margaret Fuller 381–400.Google Scholar
Fuller, Margaret “Emerson's Essays.” 1844. Myerson, Margaret Fuller 240–24.Google Scholar
Gabel, Leona C. From Slavery to the Sorbonne and Beyond: The Life and Writings of Anna J. Cooper. Introd. Sidney Kaplan. Smith Coll. Studies in History 49. Ed. Stanley Melkins et al. Northampton: Smith Coll. Dept. of History, 1982.Google Scholar
Gates, Henry Louis Jr “African American Criticism.” Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies. Ed. Greenblatt, Stephen and Gunn, Giles. New York: MLA, 1992. 303–30.Google Scholar
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Gilmore, Michael T. American Romanticism and the Marketplace. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gluck, Scherna “Socialist Feminism between the Two World Wars: Insights from Oral History.” Decades of Discontent: The Women's Movement, 1920-40. Ed. Scharf, Lois and Jensen, Joan M. Contributions in Women's Studies 28. Westport: Greenwood, 1983. 279–27.Google Scholar
Goshgarian, G. M. To Kiss the Chastening Rod: Domestic Fiction and Sexual Ideology in the American Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Griffith, Elisabeth. In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. New York: Oxford UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Gunn, Giles B “The Kingdoms of Theory and the New Historicism in America.” Yale Review 77.2 (1988): 207–20.Google Scholar
Hedrick, Joan D. Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, and Boynton, Henry Walcott. A Reader's History of American Literature. Boston: Houghton, 1903.Google Scholar
Howe, M. A. De Wolfe. Barrett Wendell and His Letters. Boston: Atlantic Monthly, 1924.Google Scholar
Howells, W[illiam] D[ean] “Professor Barrett Wendell's Notions of American Literature.” 1901. Selected Literary Criticism. Vol. 3. Gen. ed. David J. Nordloh. Introd. Ronald Gottesman. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993. 50–63.Google Scholar
Hubbell, Jay B. Who Are the Major American Writers? A Study of the Changing Literary Canon. Durham: Duke UP, 1972.Google Scholar
Hull, Gloria T. Color, Sex, and Poetry: Three Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Irwin, John T. American Hieroglyphics: The Symbol of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics in the American Renaissance, New Haven: Yale UP, 1980.Google Scholar
Jones, Howard Mumford. The Theory of American Literature. 1948. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1965.Google Scholar
Karcher, Carolyn L. The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child. New Americanists. Ed. Donald E. Pease. Durham: Duke UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Kirk, Ellen Olney “Women Fiction Writers of America.” Farmer, What America Owes 194–204.Google Scholar
Kolodny, Annette “The Integrity of Memory: Creating a New Literary History of the United States.” American Literature 57 (1985): 291–307.Google Scholar
Lauter, Paul. Canons and Contexts. New York: Oxford UP, 1991.10.1093/oso/9780195055931.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lauter, Paul, gen. ed The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1. Lexington: Heath, 1990.Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. H. Studies in Classic American Literature. 1923. New York: Viking, 1969.Google Scholar
Leverenz, David. Manhood and the American Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain “American Literary Tradition and the Negro.” Modern Quarterly 3 (1926): 215–21. Rpt. in Stewart 433–43.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain “The Concept of Race as Applied to Social Culture.” Howard Review 1 (1924): 290–29. Rpt. in Stewart 423–42.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain Foreword. Locke, New Negro ix-xi.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain “Harlem.” Graphic Survey 53.11 (1925): 629–62. Rpt. in Stewart 5–6.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain “The Negro's Contribution to American Art and Literature.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 140 (1928): 234–23. Rpt. in Stewart 439–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locke, Alain “The Negro's Contribution to American Culture.” Journal of Negro Education 8 (1939): 521–52. Rpt. in Stewart 451–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locke, Alain “Negro Youth Speaks.” Locke, New Negro 47–53.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain “The New Negro.” Locke, New Negro 3–16.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain, ed The New Negro: An Interpretation. 1925. New York: Arno, 1968.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain “Our Little Renaissance.” 1927. Rpt. in Stewart 21–22.Google Scholar
Loving, Jerome. Lost in the Customhouse: Authorship in the American Renaissance. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marchalonis, Shirley. The Worlds of Lucy Larcom, 1824-93. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1989.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. London: Oxford UP, 1941.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F O “The Best Critic of Her Day?” New Republic 8 Sept. 1941: 314.Google Scholar
Matthiessen, F O “The Flowering of New England.” New England Quarterly 9 (1936): 701–70. Rpt. in The Responsibilities of the Critic: Essays and Reviews by F. O. Matthiessen. Ed. Rackliffe, John. New York: Oxford UP, 1952. 199–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthiessen, F O. Sarah Orne Jewett. Boston: Riverside-Houghton, 1929.Google Scholar
McFadden, Margaret T ‘“America's Boy Friend Who Can't Get a Date’: Gender, Race, and the Cultural Work of the Jack Benny Program, 1932-46.” Journal of American History 80 (1993): 113–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melville, Herman “Hawthorne and His Mosses.” 1850. The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860. Ed. Hayford, Harrison et al. Evanston: Northwestern UP; Chicago: Newberry Lib., 1987. Vol. 9 of The Writings of Herman Melville. 239–23.Google Scholar
Michaels, Walter Benn, and Pease, Donald E., eds The American Renaissance Reconsidered. Selected Papers from the English Inst. 1982–83 ns 9. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Moers, Ellen. Harriet Beecher Stowe and American Literature. Hartford: Stowe-Day Foundation, 1978.Google Scholar
Mumford, Lewis. The Golden Day: A Study in American Experience and Culture. New York: Liveright, 1926.Google Scholar
Myerson, Joel, ed The American Renaissance in New England. Detroit: Gale, 1978. Vol. 1 of The Dictionary of Literary Biography.Google Scholar
Myerson, Joel. Margaret Fuller: Essays on American Life and Letters. New Haven: College and University, 1978.Google Scholar
Myerson, Joel. Studies in the American Renaissance. Boston: Twayne, 1977-82. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1983- .Google Scholar
Myerson, Joel. The Transcendentalists: A Review of Research and Criticism. New York: MLA, 1984.Google Scholar
Olsen, Tillie “A Biographical Interpretation.” “Life in the Iron Mills” and Other Stories. By Rebecca Harding Davis. Rev. ed. New York: Feminist, 1985. 69–174.Google Scholar
Osgood, Samuel. Evert Augustus Duyckinck, His Life, Writings, and Influence: A Memoir. Boston: Clapp, 1879.Google Scholar
Osgood, Samuel “The German in America.” Christian Examiner Nov. 1851: 350–35.Google Scholar
Osgood, Samuel “Our Daughters.” Harper's New Monthly Magazine Dec. 1857: 72-77. Rpt. as “American Girls.” American Leaves: Familiar Notes of Thought and Life. 1866. Essay Index Rpt. Series. Freeport: Books for Lib., 1972. 95–113.Google Scholar
Osgood, Samuel “Transcendentalism in New England.” International Review Nov. 1876:742-63.Google Scholar
Parrington, Vernon L. The Romantic Revolution in America, 1800-1860. New York: Harcourt, 1927. New York: Harvest-Harcourt, 1954. Vol. 2 of Main Currents in American Thought.Google Scholar
Pattee, Fred Lewis. The First Century of American Literature, 1770-1870. New York: Appleton, 1935.Google Scholar
Pattee, Fred Lewis. A History of American Literature, with a View to the Fundamental Principles Underlying Its Development. New York: Silver, 1896.Google Scholar
Peabody, Elizabeth P “The Dorian Measure, with a Modern Application.” Aesthetic Papers. Ed. Peabody. 1849. Facsimile ed. Ed. Joseph Jones. Gainesville: Scholars', 1957.64-111.Google Scholar
Pease, Donald E. Introduction. Michaels and Pease vii-xi.Google Scholar
Pease, Donald E. Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings in Cultural Context. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1987.Google Scholar
Peterson, Carla L. “Doers of the Word”: African-American Women Speakers and Writers in the North (1830-1880). Race and American Culture. Ed. Arnold Rampersad and Shelley Fisher Fishkin. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Railton, Stephen. Authorship and Audience: Literary Performance in the American Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Larry J. European Revolutions and the American Literary Renaissance. New Haven: Yale UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Richards, Laura E., and Elliott, Maud Howe. Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910. Vol. 2. Boston: Houghton, 1915.Google Scholar
Richardson, Charles F. American Literature. 1607-1885. 2 vols. 1886, 1888. Popular Ed. New York: Putnam's, 1895.Google Scholar
Richardson, Charles F. A Primer of American Literature. Boston: Houghton, 1878.Google Scholar
Richardson, Robert D. Jr “Margaret Fuller and Myth.” Prospects 4 (1979): 169–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, Robert D. Jr. Myth and Literature in the American Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Ritter, Harry. Dictionary of Concepts in History. Westport: Greenwood, 1986.Google Scholar
Romero, Lora “Domesticity and Fiction.” The Columbia History of the American Novel. Ed. Elliott, Emory. New York: Columbia UP, 1991. 110–11.Google Scholar
Ronda, Bruce A., ed Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: American Renaissance Woman. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Ryan, Mary P. Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots. 1825-1880. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Shoup, Francis A “Uncle Tom's Cabin Forty Years After.” Sewanee Review 11 (1893): 88–104. Rpt. in Ammons, Critical Essays 49–59.Google Scholar
Showalter, Elaine. Sister's Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women's Writing. The Clarendon Lectures 1989. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.Google Scholar
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Solomon, Barbara Miller “The Intellectual Background of the Immigration Restriction Movement in New England.” New England Quarterly 25.1 (1952): 47–59.Google Scholar
[Stanton, Elizabeth Cady] The Woman's Bible. New York: European, 1895-98.Google Scholar
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Anthony, Susan B., and Gage, Matilda J., eds. History of Woman Suffrage. Vol. 1. New York: Fowler. 1881.Google Scholar
Steele, Jeffrey. The Representation of the Self in the American Renaissance. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1987.Google Scholar
Stewart, Jeffrey C., ed The Critical Temper of Alain Locke: A Selection of His Essays on Art and Culture. Critical Studies on Black Life and Culture 8. Ed. Henry Louis Gates. New York: Garland, 1983.Google Scholar
Sundquist, Eric J “Slavery, Revolution, and the American Renaissance.” Michaels and Pease 1–33.Google Scholar
Tompkins, Jane “The Other American Renaissance.” Michaels and Pease 34–57.Google Scholar
Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Trent, William P. A History of American Literature, 1607-1865. New York: Appleton, 1903.Google Scholar
Trimble, Esther J. A Hand-book of English and American Literature. Philadelphia: Eldredge, 1882.Google Scholar
Vanderbilt, Kermit. American Literature and the Academy: The Roots, Growth, and Maturity of a Profession. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1986.Google Scholar
Warner, Charles Dudley “The Story of Uncle Tom's Cabin.” Atlantic Monthly July 1896: 311-21. Rpt. in Ammons, Critical Essays 60–72.Google Scholar
Wendell, Barrett. A Literary History of America. Lib. of Lit. History. New York: Scribner's, 1900.Google Scholar
Wendell, Barrett, and Greenough, Chester Noyes. A History of Literature in America. New York: Scribner's, 1904.Google Scholar
West, Kenyon “Margaret Fuller's Permanent Influence: The Measure of Her Footprint on Earth.” Poet-Lore 7 (1895): 377–37.Google Scholar
Williams, Stanley T. American Literature. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1933.Google Scholar
Wright, Louis B “The Renaissance Tradition in America.” The American Writer and the European Tradition. Ed. Margaret Denny and William, H Gilman. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1950. 3–15.Google Scholar
Yellin, Jean Fagan Afterword. Margaret Howth: A Story of Today. By Rebecca Harding Davis. New York: Feminist, 1990. 271–302.Google Scholar
Ziff, Larzer. Literary Democracy: The Declaration of Cultural Independence in America. New York: Viking, 1981.Google Scholar