American Declarations : Repentance and Rebellion in American Cultural History

by Bush, Harold K.

• ISBN13: 9780252067358
• ISBN10: 0252067355
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-01-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

Harold K. Bush Jr. considers the mythic and rhetorical content of these definitive statements, which generally occur in the midst of cultural conflict, and clarifies how these pivotal moments both defend and reshape the "myth" that is the United States. Significant moments in our literary history -- in public speeches like Lincoln's first inaugural address, Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" or Robert Frost's recital at John F. Kennedy's inauguration -- both reflect and foster our beliefs of who Americans are and what America means.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Metanoia, Declarations of In/Dependence, and America's Regnant Myth of Concern	p. 1
Building the Myth
Reinventing the Puritans: George Bancroft, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Birth of Endicott's Ghost	p. 15
Revolutionary Enactment: Frederick Douglass, the African American Metanoia, and the Cultural Work of the Declaration of Independence	p. 33
Holiness and the Sanctification Gap: Sojourner Truth, African American Women, and the Cultural Work of Doing the Word	p. 52
Closing the Sanctification Gap: Doing the Word in Uncle Tom's Cabin	p. 71
Abraham Lincoln as America's Revivalist	p. 90
Misreading the Myth
Introduction: Emerson as Myth	p. 109
The Myth of the Oppositional West: Mark Twain's Declaration of In/Dependence at Whittier's Seventieth Birthday Celebration	p. 124
Cultural Conflict Makes the Man: Sinclair Lewis as Pagan, 100 Percent American, and Nobel Laureate	p. 147
Trilling's Frost versus Kennedy's Frost: Competing Poles of a Paradox within America's Regnant Myth	p. 167
Notes	p. 187
Index	p. 219
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