Introduction : The open text: American writers and their environment -- pt. 1 : God's bow, man's arrows: religion, reform, and American literature -- The new religious style -- The reform impulse and the paradox of immoral didacticism -- The transcendentalists, Whitman, and popular reform -- Hawthorne and the reform impulse -- Melville's whited sepulchres.
pt. 2 : Public poison: sensationalism and sexuality -- The sensational press and the rise of subversive literature -- The erotic imagination -- Poe and popular irrationalism -- Hawthorne's cultural demons -- Melville's ruthless democracy -- Whitman's transfigured sensationalism.
pt. 3 : Other Amazons: women's rights, women's wrongs, and the literary imagination -- Types of American womanhood -- Hawthorne's heroines -- The American women's renaissance and Emily Dickinson.
pt. 4 : The grotesque posture: popular humor and the American subversive style -- The carnivalization of American language -- Transcendental wild oats -- Whitman's poetic humor -- Stylized laughter in Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville.
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