Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination

Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination PDF Author: Kenyon Gradert
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022669402X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
The Puritans of popular memory are dour figures, characterized by humorless toil at best and witch trials at worst. “Puritan” is an insult reserved for prudes, prigs, or oppressors. Antebellum American abolitionists, however, would be shocked to hear this. They fervently embraced the idea that Puritans were in fact pioneers of revolutionary dissent and invoked their name and ideas as part of their antislavery crusade. Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination reveals how the leaders of the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement—from landmark figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson to scores of lesser-known writers and orators—drew upon the Puritan tradition to shape their politics and personae. In a striking instance of selective memory, reimagined aspects of Puritan history proved to be potent catalysts for abolitionist minds. Black writers lauded slave rebels as new Puritan soldiers, female antislavery militias in Kansas were cast as modern Pilgrims, and a direct lineage of radical democracy was traced from these early New Englanders through the American and French Revolutions to the abolitionist movement, deemed a “Second Reformation” by some. Kenyon Gradert recovers a striking influence on abolitionism and recasts our understanding of puritanism, often seen as a strictly conservative ideology, averse to the worldly rebellion demanded by abolitionists.

Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination

Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination PDF Author: Kenyon Gradert
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022669402X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
The Puritans of popular memory are dour figures, characterized by humorless toil at best and witch trials at worst. “Puritan” is an insult reserved for prudes, prigs, or oppressors. Antebellum American abolitionists, however, would be shocked to hear this. They fervently embraced the idea that Puritans were in fact pioneers of revolutionary dissent and invoked their name and ideas as part of their antislavery crusade. Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination reveals how the leaders of the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement—from landmark figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson to scores of lesser-known writers and orators—drew upon the Puritan tradition to shape their politics and personae. In a striking instance of selective memory, reimagined aspects of Puritan history proved to be potent catalysts for abolitionist minds. Black writers lauded slave rebels as new Puritan soldiers, female antislavery militias in Kansas were cast as modern Pilgrims, and a direct lineage of radical democracy was traced from these early New Englanders through the American and French Revolutions to the abolitionist movement, deemed a “Second Reformation” by some. Kenyon Gradert recovers a striking influence on abolitionism and recasts our understanding of puritanism, often seen as a strictly conservative ideology, averse to the worldly rebellion demanded by abolitionists.

American Puritan Imagination

American Puritan Imagination PDF Author: Sacvan Bercovitch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521098410
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Over the last two decades a major revaluation has been taking place of the colonial Puritan imagination. With the growth of interest in early American literature has come increasing recognition of its quality and a better understanding of its place in the continuity of American culture. However, much of the best critical work to date has been published as articles in scholarly journals, and in bringing together for the first time the best work in this growing field the present anthology fills a number of important needs. It is at once a valuabale and accessible introduction for students, a summing-up of a new enterprise, and a guide for further studies.

Hawthorne on the Imagination

Hawthorne on the Imagination PDF Author: Richard Joseph Coanda
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.)
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter PDF Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Hawthorne’s Wilderness: Nature and Puritanism in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and “Young Goodman Brown"

Hawthorne’s Wilderness: Nature and Puritanism in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and “Young Goodman Brown Author: Marina Boonyaprasop
Publisher: Anchor Academic Publishing (aap_verlag)
ISBN: 3954895447
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of America’s most noted and highly praised writers, and a key figure in US literature. Although, he struggled to become an acknowledged author for most parts of his life, his work “stands in the limelight of the American literary consciousness” (Graham 5). For he is a direct descendant of Massachusetts Bay colonists in the Puritan era of the 17th and 18th century, New England served as a lifelong preoccupation for Hawthorne, and inspired many of his best-known stories. Hence, in order to understand the author and his work, it is crucial to apprehend the historical background from which his stories arose. The awareness of the Puritan legacy in Hawthorne’s time, and their Calvinist beliefs which contributed to the establishment of American identity, serve as a basis for fathoming the intention behind Hawthorne’s writings. His forefathers’ concept of wilderness became an important part of their religious life, and in many of Hawthorne’s tales, nature can be perceived as an active agent for the plot and the moral message. Therefore, it is indispensable to consider the development behind the Puritan perception, as well as the prevailing opinion on nature during the writer’s lifetime. After the historical background has been depicted, the author himself is focused. His ambiguous character and non-persistent lifestyle are the source of many themes which can be retrieved from his works. Thus, understanding the man behind the stories is necessary in order to analyze the tales themselves. Seclusion, nature, and Puritanism are constantly recurring topics in the author’s life and work. To become familiar with Hawthorne’s relation to nature, his ancestors, and religion, it is essential to understand the vast amount of symbols his stories. His stories will be brought into focus, and will be analyzed on the basis of the historical and biographical facts, and further, his particular style and purpose will be taken into consideration.The second part of this book analyzes two of the author’s most eminent and esteemed works, namely ‘Young Goodman Brown’ and ‘The Scarlet Letter’ in terms of nature symbolism and the underlying moral intention. Further, it is examined to which extent the images correspond to the formerly explained historical facts, and Hawthorne’s emphasized characteristic features. The comparison of the two works focuses on the didactic purpose for in all of his works, Hawthorne’s aim was to give a lesson. Thus, it will [...]

Colonial Revivals

Colonial Revivals PDF Author: Lindsay DiCuirci
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 081229551X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
In the long nineteenth century, the specter of lost manuscripts loomed in the imagination of antiquarians, historians, and writers. Whether by war, fire, neglect, or the ravages of time itself, the colonial history of the United States was perceived as a vanishing record, its archive a hoard of materially unsound, temporally fragmented, politically fraught, and endangered documents. Colonial Revivals traces the labors of a nineteenth-century cultural network of antiquarians, bibliophiles, amateur historians, and writers as they dug through the nation's attics and private libraries to assemble early American archives. The collection of colonial materials they thought themselves to be rescuing from oblivion were often reprinted to stave off future loss and shore up a sense of national permanence. Yet this archive proved as disorderly and incongruous as the collection of young states themselves. Instead of revealing a shared origin story, historical reprints testified to the inveterate regional, racial, doctrinal, and political fault lines in the American historical landscape. Even as old books embodied a receding past, historical reprints reflected the antebellum period's most pressing ideological crises, from religious schisms to sectionalism to territorial expansion. Organized around four colonial regional cultures that loomed large in nineteenth-century literary history—Puritan New England, Cavalier Virginia, Quaker Pennsylvania, and the Spanish Caribbean—Colonial Revivals examines the reprinted works that enshrined these historical narratives in American archives and minds for decades to come. Revived through reprinting, the obscure texts of colonial history became new again, deployed as harbingers, models, reminders, and warnings to a nineteenth-century readership increasingly fixated on the uncertain future of the nation and its material past.

Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination

Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination PDF Author: Kenyon Gradert
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022669416X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
The Puritans of popular memory are dour figures, characterized by humorless toil at best and witch trials at worst. “Puritan” is an insult reserved for prudes, prigs, or oppressors. Antebellum American abolitionists, however, would be shocked to hear this. They fervently embraced the idea that Puritans were in fact pioneers of revolutionary dissent and invoked their name and ideas as part of their antislavery crusade. Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination reveals how the leaders of the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement—from landmark figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson to scores of lesser-known writers and orators—drew upon the Puritan tradition to shape their politics and personae. In a striking instance of selective memory, reimagined aspects of Puritan history proved to be potent catalysts for abolitionist minds. Black writers lauded slave rebels as new Puritan soldiers, female antislavery militias in Kansas were cast as modern Pilgrims, and a direct lineage of radical democracy was traced from these early New Englanders through the American and French Revolutions to the abolitionist movement, deemed a “Second Reformation” by some. Kenyon Gradert recovers a striking influence on abolitionism and recasts our understanding of puritanism, often seen as a strictly conservative ideology, averse to the worldly rebellion demanded by abolitionists.

A Study of Hawthorne by George Parsons Lathrop

A Study of Hawthorne by George Parsons Lathrop PDF Author: George Parsons Lathrop
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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The Drama of the American Short Story, 1800-1865

The Drama of the American Short Story, 1800-1865 PDF Author: Michael J. Collins
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047213003X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
A new history of the origins of the American short story and its relationship to theatrical performance culture

A Study of Hawthorne

A Study of Hawthorne PDF Author: George Parsons Lathrop
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description