Beneath the American Renaissance:

...He was, after all, one of Harvard's great "Three M's" (Matthiessen, Kenneth Murdock, Perry Miller) who did so much in the middle years of this century to revise our understanding of the American past and its cultural fruits...

...Indeed, its literary view of "the possibilities of democracy" (Matthiessen's phrase) extends far beyond anything in American Renaissance...

...It's never quite that simple with either literature or the imaginations that produce it...

...It does not so much "bridge the gap between . . . literature as self-referential and [as] cultural history" as extend it further in both directions...

...While essentially literary in approach, Matthiessen was explicit about not wishing to divorce the text from its social and political setting...

...Reynolds goes so far as to argue that this influence from below was crucial, rather than merely incidental...

...There is much to admire in Beneath the American Renaissance...

...A "trickle-up" theory of literature, one might call it-or, in light of the generally vivifying (even vulgarizing) effect Reynolds detects popular authors had on their betters, "the exuberance of influence" (pace Harold Bloom...

...It comprises four major sections...

...Clearly, he has written a work of grand ambition and even grander industry...

...Reynolds would seem to have read nearly everything-I do not exaggerate-published in antebellum nineteenth-century America...

...Reconstructive criticism" is Reynolds's term for what he has done: "this approach calls upon the historical critic to reconstruct as completely as possible the socioliterary milieu of literary works through the exploration of a broad array of forgotten social and imaginative texts, paving the way for responsible reinterpretations of canonized works and making possible the rediscovery of lost literature...

...In each section Reynolds begins by noting a variety of examples-themes, characters, imagery, plots-from popular literature or journalism of the day, then points out comparable elements in the work of his seven major authors...

...That statement is both remarkable for and representative in its reductiveness, a conspicuous quality in Beneath the American Renaissance...

...Too often, Reynolds will lead us through various works by George Lippard, Ned Buntline, William Gilmore Simms and their ilk, then point to something similar in Melville or Poe...

...American Renaissance went on to become a classic in American studies...

...The final section, which pertains to humor, describes the "camivalization of American Language" and treats all of Reynolds's authors except Dickinson...

...It is the ability of literary texts to absorb the subversive images of its contemporary culture but at the same time to redirect these elements toward the suggestive and the genuinely human that accounts for their universality and enduring appeal...

...Having it both ways, while fully developing neither, this impressive a book is far less illuminating than one might have expected...

...Complementary problems here are repetitiveness and overkill, as we keep hearing about the same books-and the same elements from them...

...The first examines the impact of religion, as well as of political and social reform, on the classic American writers...

...Well, yes and no...

...As the title suggests, David S. Reynolds's Beneath the American Renaissance takes Matthiessen as its point of departure: in subject, of course, but also in approach...

...If, to take one example, Hawthorne was a devoted reader of newspapers (he was), and if newspapers and popular fiction battened on scandal (they did), and if one of the recurring figures in contemporary scandals was the licentious minister-"the reverend rake"-then Arthur Dimmesdale (in The Scarlet Letter) is a reverend rake...

...Mark Feeney It was F. O. Matthiessen who, in his 1941 book of the same name, first referred to the outpouring of works by Emerson, Whitman, Melville, Hawthorne, and Thoreau as an "American Renaissance...

...Similarities abound, but congruences do not...

...They emphasized-most notably with the Puritans, but throughout the canon-the analysis of American literature in terms of its larger cultural context...

...Yet Reynolds never shakes a key methodological problem (one which, I daresay, he does not consider a problem...

...In stating his book's procedure, Reynolds, who is director of Whitman Studies at Rutgers' Camden campus, makes this plain...

...Besides its logistical impracticality (as Thoreau said, "Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all"), Reynolds's method amounts to an unwieldy push-me, pull-you, an unwieldiness his book embodies, at once dedicated to "specific socioliterary forces" while also employing sophisticated metacritical approaches...

...The third surveys women's literature of the period, considers Hawthorne's heroines, and concludes with a lengthy analysis of Dickinson...

...It attempts to bridge the gap between criticism that treats literature as self-referential and cultural history, in which the uniqueness of the literary text often gets lost...

...Matthiessen excluded them for chronological reasons...

...And there you have it: Only connect...

...Reynolds adds Poe and Dickinson...

...Reynolds is particularly good on Whitman, the relationship between whose work and surroundings is so rich and varied...

...The next is devoted to sensationalism and sexuality in popular writing and their influence on Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman...

...Beneath the American Renaissance' 'compares the major literature with a broad range of lesser-known works, combines literary analysis with social history, and discusses writings of various geographical regions and both sexes...