Reviews for Romances of the Republic: Women, the Family, and Violence in the Literature of the Early American Nation

The average rating for Romances of the Republic: Women, the Family, and Violence in the Literature of the Early American Nation based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-11-15 00:00:00 Eric Crowder If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review. Calvinistic Heinlein (NOT!): "The Classical Years of Robert A. Heinlein" by George Edgar Slusser   "Heinlein is a writer who represents a certain strain in our culture, a kind of secular Calvinist vision of the world of the elect and the damned."   From "The Classics Years of Robert A. Heinlein" by George Edgar Slusser   "Heinlein rarely discussed his own stories at all except in shoptalk with another writer - but he made an exception here. In response to a question about "Coventry" and the "Calvinist" reading that had been advanced by George Edgar Slusser, he hardly needed to think about the problem. Stover and Slusser were both mistaken: they had taken different gambits written into the story that misdirected their thinking."   From "Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: 1948-1988. The Man Who Learned Better" by William H. Patterson, Jr.   I was not convinced by Slusser's circular arguments. What I needed was a balanced and objective view, one that would put Heinlein's strengths and many weaknesses into a rounded view, namely is supposed Calvinism. I did not find it here. Philip K. Dick was the only writer to "suffer" a Calvinistic canonization, where every word he ever wrote seemed (seems?) to be treated as sacred writ (e.g., his religious visions are still taken seriously in this day and age). As for Heinlein, I still think the so-called solipsism of his latter novels is much more pronounced than his supposed TULIP-Calvinism.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-12-18 00:00:00 Michael Perik Reading critical compendiums of an author when one is an author himself (or herself, as this case is not,) can be a frightening experience, because transference is a real activity that leads to nightmares. Faulkner is, in this collection of critical analyses, often damned with faint praise that usually forms around the notion that he was a genius, when what he had was genius, the genius being a comprehensive grasp of his community and the variety of people in it, while at the same time exploding with the forces within him that were formed by the circumstances of his time and place of birth, the frame of family from which there was no escape, and the atmosphere of creativity that surrounded the times of his expressions. It was the smell and sight of these critics flaying and filleting him and his work, digging into him with the intensity of a pathologist over a corpse, that frightened this author. The scare drives me into questioning each and every word that I have and might yet summon out of my own genius, all of the elements of scene and sense that I might create out of memory and experience, that may prove too revealing, too exposing, for me to suffer. But if the reader of these essays are kin to those pathologists, then I suppose what is my terror is their manna, and I say go for it. These critics do a pretty good job of removing Faulkner's clothes, broadcloth and buttons, as well as his flesh, his muscles and bones, with the intent of discovering the motivation and soul of a man driven to expose himself as much as necessary.