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Review Author(s): Marcus Cunliffe Review by: Marcus Cunliffe Source: American Studies International, Vol. 24, No. 1 (April 1986), pp. 88-89Published by: Mid-America American Studies AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41278839Accessed: 09-03-2015 15:25 UTC

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and Annaliste historical techniques to the white legendry of American Indians; and examina- tions of the Walt Disney version of Crockett and of Crockett as portrayed in popular song.

Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 211 pp. $14.50. Professor Shipps has established herself as the leading non-Mormon historian of the Lat-

ter Day Saints. She is quite free from the animus that has marked some accounts of the Mormon church, and almost free from the mildness and blandness of some of the Church's own chroniclers. This clear, knowledgeable, sympathetic interpretation rests upon the view that Mormonism has become indisputably accepted as an American, indeed an interna- tional, religious organization.

Robert H. Walker, Reform in America: The Continuing Frontier (Lexington: University of Ken- tucky Press, 1985), 270 pp. $25.00. The present work should, ideally, be read in conjunction with the same author's collec-

tion of annotated documents, The Reform Spirit in America , first published in 1976 and now reprinted in hardcover by Robert E. Krieger Publishing Co., Melbourne, Florida, 1985, 704 pp., $42.50. This earlier volume rests on the premise that reform has been not intermittent but continuous in the nation's evolution. The reform impulse, one might say, is as American as apple pie. The idea is developed, with fresh insights and in aphoristic prose, in Pro- fessor Walker's new volume. As before he eschews any obvious, textbookish, chronological organization, preferring instead to emphasize certain versions of reform (politico-economic, social justice, planners' dreams), and to highlight these by means of deft, brief vignettes on particular people and episodes. The illustrations likewise avoid hackneyed instances. There are comprehensive notes and bibliography, and a valuable chronology of the "money question," 1832-1913.

Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class , 1788-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 446 pp. $34.95. An acclaimed and prizewinning "historical essay on capitalism and democracy in the

United States." More precisely, the author examines the emergence of a workingman's culture in the New York City of the Jefferson and Jackson eras. This culture, for Professor Wilentz, embodied successive forms of "republicanism" (a now-fashionable concept, or set of concepts, on which he heavily relies). Industrialism, class-consciousness, ethnic and racial tensions are carefully examined in this richly documented, eloquent study, conceived somewhat in the spirit of the European historians Christopher Hill, Maurice Agulhon, and above all E. P. Thompson. American influences or associations include the work of Eric Foner, David Montgomery, and the late Herbert Gutman. This national ancestry is underlined by the adoption, for the book's title and its chapter epigraphs, of lines from Mannahatta's "workie" bard, Walt Whitman.

LITERATURE

William Faulkner, Novels 1930-1935: As I Lay Dying. Sanctuary. Light in August. Pylon (New York: Library of America, 1985), 1034 pp. $27.50. Joseph Blotner, Faulkner's most recent biographer, has combined with Noel Polk to pre-

sent a careful "authoritative" text of four major works. The text is based on study of Faulkner's typescript and corrections- these collated with subsequent alterations imposed by editors or typesetters. Blotner and Polk point out that, for instance with Sanctuary ; Faulkner

American Studies International, April 1986, Vol. XXIV, No. 1

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planned his work more painstakingly than his subsequent descriptions would have us believe.

M. Thomas Inge, ed., Huck Finn Among the Critics: A Centennial Selection (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1985), 465 pp. $25.00. M. Thomas Inge, a professor at Randolph-Macon College and former resident scholar

(1982-84) for the U.S. I. A., is a specialist on American popular culture and the humor of the old South-West. For the centenary of the publication of Huckleberry Finn he has put together about thirty essays, most of which are well-known tributes and analyses. They go back in time to the comments of Twain's contemporaries (Thomas Sergeant Perry, Andrew Lang, William Dean Howells), and come up to the present day via some of the classic obser- vations of Lionel Trilling, Leslie Fiedler, Leo Marx, and James M. Cox. There is a new essay by Perry Frank on film versions of Huck, and a substantial annotated checklist of Huck Finn criticism, 1884-1984, compiled by Thomas A. Tenney.

Philip C. Kolin, ed., Shakespeare in the South: Essays on Performance (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1983), 297 pp. $20.00; Shakespeare and Southern Writers: A Study in Influence (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985, with foreword by Lewis P. Simpson), 177 pp. $20.00. The first of these collections looks at the history of Shakespeare performances in various

parts of the South, from the colonial era to the present day. It is no surprise to discover that, in Professor Kolin' s words, " Shakespeare was the most popular dramatist on the antebellum southern stage and the most performed playwright in the South since." More surprising is the argument, developed in an essay by Charles B. Lower, that Othello was among the popular plays. His explanation is that 19th-century American theatre was granted the immunities of "art" and regarded as "distanced from life." The second Kolin volume puts together essays on similarities or influences between Shakespeare and the work of eight Southern writers- Simms, Timrod, Lanier, Twain, Faulkner, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, and Walker Percy. The idea works better in most instances than might be anticipated.

Charles J. Rooney, Jr., Dreams and Visions: A Study of American Utopias, 1865-1917 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985; Contributions to American Studies, no. 77), 208 pp. $29.95. The book is an outgrowth of a George Washington University seminar conducted by Robert

H. Walker. Dr. Rooney analyzes the scores of fictional Utopias produced in the United States between the Civil War and American involvement in World War I. He defines Utopia as "any fictional work that presents an alternative way of life from the status quo by describ- ing an ideal society." Types of Utopia are characterized as "individualist," "cooperative," "legal," "socialist," and "totalitarian." Professor Rooney discusses many relatively obscure tales, along with the familiar ones by Bellamy, Donnelly, et al. The bibliography is somewhat out of date.

Agnieszka Salska, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson: Poetry of the Central Consciousness (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 220 pp. $25.00. The Polish scholar Agnieszka Salska, of the University of Lodz, starts with the premise

that the two contemporaries, Whitman and Dickinson, were the best poets of their American century, and that their relationship to the intellectual and aesthetic issues of the day must be worthy of study. The result is a sensitive investigation, in impeccable English, of linguistic and philosophical aspects, often surprisingly close, of the writings of a "public" and a

American Studies International, April 1986, Vol. XXIV, No. I

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Article Contentsp. 88p. 89

Issue Table of ContentsAmerican Studies International, Vol. 24, No. 1 (April 1986) pp. 1-90Front MatterReform in America: A Bibliographical Outline [pp. 2-28]The Historian's Quest for Early American Culture(s), c. 1750-1825 [pp. 29-59]Propagating the American Dream: Cultural Policies as Means of Integration [pp. 60-84]Book NotesReview: untitled [pp. 85-85]Review: untitled [pp. 85-85]Review: untitled [pp. 85-85]Review: untitled [pp. 86-86]Review: untitled [pp. 86-86]Review: untitled [pp. 86-86]Review: untitled [pp. 86-87]Review: untitled [pp. 87-87]Review: untitled [pp. 87-87]Review: untitled [pp. 87-87]Review: untitled [pp. 87-88]Review: untitled [pp. 88-88]Review: untitled [pp. 88-88]Review: untitled [pp. 88-88]Review: untitled [pp. 88-89]Review: untitled [pp. 89-89]Review: untitled [pp. 89-89]Review: untitled [pp. 89-89]Review: untitled [pp. 89-90]Review: untitled [pp. 90-90]Review: untitled [pp. 90-90]Review: untitled [pp. 90-90]

Back Matter