Reconstituting the American RenaissanceChallenging the standard periodization of American literary history, Reconstituting the American Renaissance reinterprets the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman and the relationship of these two authors to each other. Jay Grossman argues that issues of political representationinvolving vexed questions of who shall speak and for whomlie at the heart of American political and literary discourse from the revolutionary era through the Civil