Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville by David S. Reynolds (review)

Book Reviews119 self-interest is the determining force in social and political affairs and selfpreservation and disaster inscribe the boundaries of human destiny. In spite ofits considerable virtues, Reeve's study is altogether too predictable to constitute a vigorously new reading of Kleist. In terms of method and argument, it is standard fare in the world of Kleist criticism. To a rather long list of oppositions that have been said to structure and inform Kleist's world, Reeve adds the alternatives of self-preservation and disaster. This is not a major contribution to our understanding. Reeve's study also works against itself. It simplifies and reduces Kleist's world to a recurring character type who dominates the dramatic action. This is ironic in view of the fact that, according to Reeve, Kleist attempted to question and thus to complicate the dominant eighteenth-century view of man. More importantly, Reeve's study stands in contrast to what others have claimed Kleist does so well—namely, question the nature ofpower itself. French critic and novelist Hélène Cixous, for example, maintains that Kleist's plays do not represent political reality as much as they try to change it (The Newly Born Woman, Minneapolis: U ofMinnesota P, 1986, 98-123). Like other critics who argue that Kleist's works are more ambiguous than pessimistic, Cixous suggests that Kleist must be read with the awareness of ambiguity and equivocal meaning. Only in this way can we perceive Kleist's belief in the possibility of human relationships that are not based on power struggles and the vicissitudes of self-interest. Reading Kleist across Reeve across Cixous returns to Kleist the undecidability and ambiguity that continually justifies and rejuvenates our critical reading of his work. This ambiguity evaporates in Reeve's analysis. LYNN WORSHAM University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee DAVID S. REYNOLDS. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age ofEmerson and Melville. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. 625 p. Reynolds traces the motifs ofclassics such as Moby-Dick and The ScarletLetter backward to the popular literature of the period, thereby showing the transformations of crude and sensational popular images and themes into the substance of complex and philosophically probing masterpieces. He first explains his approach, then proceeds by focusing on four main types ofpopular writing (religious, sensationalist, feminist, and humorous), and concludes by explaining the relevance of such criticism to current attempts at revaluing the canon. He also classifies the popular literature written between 1800 and 1860 into Conventional, Subversive, and Romantic Adventure modes, and then subdivides Romantic Adventure into "its two predominant forms, Moral Adventure and Dark Adventure" (183). In spite of all his classifying, Reynolds is far from being a dry taxonomist. 120Rocky Mountain Review In the book's first part, for example, he details the "widespread shift in the style of popular religious discourse from the doctrinal to the imaginative" (15), from the rational preaching ofthe Puritan fathers to the emotional and hyperbolic sermons ofFather Taylor, the prototype for Father Mapple in MobyDick . In part 2, "Public Poison: Sensationalism and Sexuality," Reynolds shows that "The major writers were not, as is commonly believed, aliens in a literary culture of prudery or clear moral distinctions. Rather, they were responding to a heterogeneous culture which had strong elements of the criminal, the erotic, and the demonic" (169). In part 3, Reynolds turns to women's writings, and here again he finds greater diversity and influence than had been commonly supposed until recently. In part 4, Reynolds describes "a widespread carnivalization of language," "a sudden linguistic freedom" (444) that led to distinctive forms of popular humor: frontier, radical-democrat, urban, and nautical. More extensive summaries of Reynolds' "partially completed enterprise" can be found in two review essays: Patrick Brancaccio's "Restructuring the Renaissance" (American Quarterly Dec. 1988: 556-62) and Frederick Crews' "Whose American Renaissance?" (New York Review ofBooks 27 Oct. 1988: 68-81). Unlike Brancaccio, who reviews only Reynolds' book, Crews also assesses half a dozen other books about the period. Read in the context of those other books and considered in the light of recent changes in literary theory and criticism, Beneath the American Renaissance strikes Crews as being "ambitious...