Talk:American Renaissance (literature)

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Someone should label this article as a stub. Although it treats relatively few authors, the American Renaissance is a huge field of literary study. American literature springs from it. There are regularly published journals devoted solely to it. There is much to be said.

Two points: 1. Matthiessen may have coined the phrase "American Renaissance" but the term "Renaissance had long been in use to describe this period. E.g., Octavius Frothingham wrote, "[W]hat may be called the Renaissance in literature among the New England Puritans in the nineteenth century....” (page 1105, quoted in Charlene Avallone's "What American Renaissance? The Gendered Genealogy of Critical Discourse," PMLA, 112.5 (1997): 1102-1120).

2. The American Renaissance is a controversial notion insofar as its organizational logic tends to elide many writers who do not fit the gendered (male) and racial (white) characteristics (exceptions exist, of course, but by and large this is the case). Nocoleah (talk) 13:20, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Haha, WHAT controversy? White males were the only ones educated enough to do literature at the time. Universities were all-male, and no left-wing politics were even allowed. No place existed for a woman or a Black person to learn about thematic structure and mood in literature. Just because something else is true in our age is not going to erase or alter the past. Apart from fringe writings, that is where we would expect mainstream literature in America and just about anywhere else. I wouldn't make too many activist bleatings in a way that would appear dated in the coming decades. 204.92.65.10 (talk) 14:04, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposed Edits

I would first like to divide this article into three sections: Overview, Criticisms, and Notable Authors. Under the Overview section, I would like to change the time period to be a little bit more broad. Currently, the article states that it took place in the mid 19th century with emphasis around 1850-1855 but this is not backed up with a citation. I will edit this with a citation, stating that the movement took place from about 1830 to the civil war. I also see a problem with the opening paragraph in the article. It currently gives a small overview of the movement. I will move most of this information to the current overview section and then make the overview section be the first section of the article. Also, there is no reason for there to be authors listed in the first paragraph nor the overview. These should be listed in a new section labeled notable authors and works. Another section I would like to create is criticisms and arguments. Some of the criticisms I will hopefully put in this section are dealing with the lack of contributions from women and other minorities, how authors are seen as simply taking contemporary and past images and cultures and reforming them into “new” ideas. There is also criticism that only a handful of authors are associated with the movement. The last section I would like to make is for notable authors. I would include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Edgar Allan Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, and Emily Dickenson and then perhaps some of their more notable works associated with this movement. Btitl2 (talk) 04:28, 3 November 2015 (UTC)