| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Reconstituting the American Renaissance: Emerson, Whitman, and the Politics of Representation. By Jay Grossman. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. xiv, 273 pp. Cloth, $59.95, ISBN 0-8223-3129-2. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8223-3116-0.)
Q: When is an American Renaissance not exactly an American Renaissance?	1
A: When someone shows us that the individuals who have been seen as the two major figures of the movement were not up to the same thing.	2
F. O. Matthiessen defined the terms of discussion in his 1941 book, American Renaissance. Ralph Waldo Emerson the progenitor and Walt Whitman the fulfiller of the promise were the two powerhouses of a movement of American literature and cultural expression that was both unprecedented and original. The canonical Whitman, like some democratic Athena, sprang fully grown from the brow of our national literary Zeus. Emerson called for his existence in "The Poet" (1844), and there was evening and morning and Whitman in 1855. Nice story.	. . .

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