Tompkins English Literature Analysis

Tompkins’ critique of the traditional American Renaissance conspicuously emerges as the “danger” that Henry Nash Smith naively sweeps aside (4). In her reconceptualization of the literary period, she utilizes a feminist approach to explain the necessary upheaval of what literature and ‘canonicity’ represent, and exposes the discriminatory principles which work to exclude the salient works of women writers. Within this critique, it is important to establish that Tompkins’ interpreted purpose of literature is to revolutionize, to “redefine the social order” (xi). The use of diction such as “heuristic,” “didactic,” and “edification” works to define it as a means of guidance, that which exists to “provide a lesson for revolution and change” within society (xvii, 149). In this sense then, her focus on changing the “criteria” for literary judgement exists in relation to her emphasis on deeming the “influential” as simultaneously meritorious (122).
Tompkins associates female authorship with an abundance of emotion and sentimentality, a notion reminiscent of Cixous’s écriture feminine. Through the overall argument, the reader can understand these characteristics as traditionally …show more content…
To include female authors such as Stowe and Warner in the American Renaissance’s classically patriarchal canon is not simply a feat in terms of diversification, it is also an essential act in representing the contextual salience surrounding what America is, and what it has sought to change. Furthermore, I have understood her rehabilitated standards for canonicity as ones in favor of the interests of the “common” reader, ones which work to establish a set of relatively democratic values free from traditionally patriarchal influences, and ones which present the challenge of breaking away from conditioned reality in order to practice raw