Above the American Renaissance: David S. Reynolds and the Spiritual Imagination in American Literary Studies

by Harold K. Bush (Editor), Brian Yothers (Editor)

Overview

Above the American Renaissance takes David S. Reynolds's classic study Beneath the American Renaissance as a model and a provocation to consider how language and concepts broadly defined as spiritual are essential to understanding nineteenth-century American literary culture. In the 1980s, Reynolds's scholarship and methodology enlivened investigations of religious culture, and since then, for reasons that include a rising respect for interdisciplinarity and the aftershocks of the 9/11 attacks, religion in literature has become a major area of inquiry for Americanists. In essays that reconsider and contextualize Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, Abraham Lincoln, and others, this volume captures the vibrancy of spiritual considerations in American literary studies and points a way forward within literary and spiritual investigations.

In addition to the editors and David S. Reynolds, contributors include Jeffrey Bilbro, Dawn Coleman, Jonathan A. Cook, Tracy Fessenden, Zachary Hutchins, Richard Kopley, Mason I. Lowance Jr., John Matteson, Christopher N. Phillips, Vivian Pollak, Michael Robertson, Gail K. Smith, Claudia Stokes, and Timothy Sweet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625343604
Publisher:	University of Massachusetts Press
Publication date:	05/14/2018
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Harold K. Bush is professor of English at Saint Louis University and author of Continuing Bonds with the Dead: Parental Grief and Nineteenth-Century American Authors. Brian Yothers is Frances Spatz Leighton Endowed Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Texas at El Paso and author of Sacred Uncertainty: Religious Difference and the Shape of Melville's Career.

Table of Contents

Preface Brian Yothers ix

Introduction, Above the American Renaissance Tracking and Theorizing the Spiritual Turn in American Literary Studies Harold K. Bush 1

Part I Reconstructing the Spiritual and the Secular

Chapter 1 Haunted America Reading the Spiritual Turn Tracy Fessenden 21

Chapter 2 "The Spirit of Instructive Investigation" Bronson Alcott, Transcendental Childhood, and the Search for Divinity John Matteson 37

Chapter 3 Secular Melancholy Religious Skepticism and the "Literature of Misery" Dawn Coleman 52

Chapter 4 Whittier and the Mormons from Folk Magic to Freedom and Back Again Zachary McLeod Hutchins 69

Chapter 5 "Will He Perish?" Moby-Dick and Nineteenth-Century Extinction Discourse Timothy Sweet 87

Part II Reconstructing the Scriptures

Chapter 6 Higher Reading Uncle Tom's Cabin and Biblical Higher Criticism Gail K. Smith 107

Chapter 7 The "Art of Attaining Truth" in Moby-Dick Print Technologies, Hermeneutics, and Castaway Readers Jeffrey Bilbro 125

Chapter 8 "New-born Bard[s] of the Holy Ghost" The American Bibles of Walt Whitman and Joseph Smith Michael Robertson 140

Chapter 9 The Other Traditions of Palestine an 1863 Novel by Ebenezer Wheelwright Richard Kopley 161

Chapter 10 The Millennial Impulse above the American Renaissance from Jonathan Edwards to Charles Grandison Finney and the Second Great Awakening Mason I. Lowance, Jr. 175

Part III Reconstructing Popular Religion

Chapter 11 Hymns by the Fireside Religious Verse and the Rise and the fall of the Fireside Poets Claudia Stokes 195

Chapter 12 Keeping the Sabbath at Home Emily Dickinson and the Rise of Private Hymnody Christopher N. Phillips 211

Chapter 13 "The Nearest Dream Recedes - Unrealized" Emily Dickinson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Fascicle 14 Vivian R. Pollak 227

Chapter 14 Harriet Beecher Stowe and Martyrdom Protestant Missions in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Uncle Tom's Cabin in Protestant Missions Brian Yothers 245

Chapter 15 "God Will Give Him Blood to Drink" Unholy Dying in the House of the Seven Gables Jonathan A. Cook 259

Afterword. God Above, America beneath Abraham Lincoln and Religion David S. Reynolds 275

Contributors 293

Index 297

What People are Saying About This

W. Clark Gilpin

This strong group of essays will make a significant contribution to both literary and religious studies by demonstrating the extent to which greater attention to popular culture, especially religious texts and practices, can dramatically expand our understanding of nineteenth century America.

Elizabeth Fenton

This collection is the first to assess nineteenth-century American literature in this way, and it will be of tremendous use to both scholars interested in U.S. religious traditions, Christianity specifically, and those who study the writers examined here. Above the American Renaissance is also a timely and important reengagement with David Reynolds's work, a text that has laid the groundwork for nearly three decades of scholarship.

Editorial Reviews

"This collection is the first to assess nineteenth-century American literature in this way, and it will be of tremendous use to both scholars interested in U.S. religious traditions, Christianity specifically, and those who study the writers examined here. Above the American Renaissance is also a timely and important reengagement with David Reynolds's work, a text that has laid the groundwork for nearly three decades of scholarship."—Elizabeth Fenton, author of Religious Liberties: Anti-Catholicismand Liberal Democracy in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature and Culture

"This strong group of essays will make a significant contribution to both literary and religious studies by demonstrating the extent to which greater attention to popular culture, especially religious texts and practices, can dramatically expand our understanding of nineteenth century America."—W. Clark Gilpin, author of Religion Around Emily Dickinson

"The broad scope of essays from this very readable and insightful collection pays tribute to David Reynolds's landmark Beneath the American Renaissance on the eve of its thirtieth anniversary . . . [T]his book illuminatets the spiritual dimensions of the American Renaissance and extends Reynolds's scholarship into new domains."—The New England Quarterly

From the Publisher

The broad scope of essays from this very readable and insightful collection pays tribute to David Reynolds's landmark Beneath the American Renaissance on the eve of its thirtieth anniversary... [T]his book illuminatets the spiritual dimensions of the American Renaissance and extends Reynolds's scholarship into new domains.

The New England Quarterly