Doctrine and Difference

by Colacurcio, Michael J.

• ISBN13: 9780415912396
• ISBN10: 0415912393
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-12-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The enduring power of many antebellum American texts trace their inspiration to Puritanism. From Melville's preposterous but irresponsible quarrels with God to Hawthorne's instructed yet edgy evocations of earlier New England, to Dickinson's finely turned little blasphemies. Can one imagine that such texts were written anywhere but in the latter days of Puritanism? Doctrine and Difference shows how the spirit and forms of liberalism are a necessary but by no means sufficient explanation for the flowering of literature in this period. The colonialist writers were attempting to have things their own provincial way amidst an air of rejection by the cosmopolitan literary establishment. Capturing the violence of repression, the energy required to meet its moral argument head on, and the disease of embattled survival, this book shows how these works are in many ways the literary remnants of Puritanism.

Author Biography

Michael J. Colacurcio is Professor of English at UCLA.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Americanist Criticism: An Apologetical Introduction	p. 1
Christ's Reply, Saint's Assurance: Taylor's Double Standard	p. 27
The Example of Edwards: Puritan Imagination and the Metaphysics of Sovereignty	p. 61
Coda (1995): Idealism Without the Subject	p. 98
"The Corn and the Wine": Emerson, Theism, and the Piety of George Herbert	p. 109
Pleasing God: The Lucid Strife of Emerson's "Address"	p. 129
Footsteps of Ann Hutchinson: A Puritan Context for The Scarlet Letter	p. 177
"The Woman's Own Choice": Sex, Metaphor, and the Puritan "Sources" of The Scarlet Letter	p. 205
Puritans in Spite	p. 229
Notes	p. 251
Index	p. 295
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