Early American Literature and Culture

by Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle

• ISBN13: 9780874134230
• ISBN10: 0874134234
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1992-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of Delaware Pr

Summary

Early American Literature and Culture: Essays Honoring Harrison T. Meserole, a timely collection that reflects changing conceptions of the field, contains studies by leading scholars and celebrates the achievements of Harrison T. Meserole--colonialist, bibliographer, and Shakespeare scholar extraordinaire. These dynamic essays deal with areas at the forefront of current research, such as popular culture, minority and non-Anglo writings, recanonization, genre studies, and Anglo-American links. All the contributors were Meserole's students sometime during the twenty-eight years he taught at The Pennsylvania State University, and all have established their own scholarly reputations since then.
Timothy K. Conley examines the institutionalization of American literature. Donald P. Wharton considers the influence of the English Renaissance on Colonial sea literature. Paul J. Lindholdt provides an overview of a vast popular genre, the colonial promotion tract.
Raymond F. Dolle uncovers the satire against Sir Walter Raleigh, the romantic treasure-seeker, by his more hard-nosed contemporary, John Smith. Reiner Smolinski's revisionist essay argues that New England's leading divines did not--as many still believe--justify their Errand eschatologically. Ada Van Gastel discusses the main text of the early Dutch colonists, by Adriaen van der Donck.
Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola analyzes Sarah Kemble Knight's travel journal as an unusual example of a Puritan picaresque. Jeffrey Walker probes eighteenth-century undergraduate commonplace books revealing the seamy side of Harvard undergraduate life. Stephen R. Yarbrough examines Jonathan Edwards's conceptions of time in the last work he saw to press before he died.
Robert D. Arner introduces and annotates two unpublished poems by the Samuel Pepys of eighteenth-century Virginia, Robert Bolling. Robert D. Habich explores Franklin's rhetorical method as rooted in contemporary empirical science. Cheryl Z. Oreovicz shows how Mercy Warren's tragedies contained stern messages for the post-Revolutionary "Lost generation."
Jayne K. Kribbs looks at the popular novelist John Davis as a candidate for recanonization, and Paul Sorrentino shows that Mason Lock Weems's so-called children's classic, The Life of Washington, is a complex, artistic work for adults.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 9
Introduction	p. 15
National Interest and the Genealogy of Early American Literature	p. 23
Hudson's Mermaid: Symbol and Myth in Early American Sea Literature	p. 38
The Significance of the Colonial Promotion Tract	p. 57
Captain John Smith's Satire of Sir Walter Raleigh	p. 73
Jehovah's Peculium: The New Jerusalem and the Jews in Puritan Eschatology	p. 84
Ethnic Pluralism in Early American Literature: Incorporating Dutch-American Texts into the Canon	p. 109
The New England Frontier and the Picaresque in Sarah Kemble Knight's Journal	p. 122
"The War of the Words" in Harvard's Class of '54: Collegiate Literary Culture in Eighteenth-Century America	p. 132
The Beginning of Time: Jonathan Edwards's Original Sin	p. 149
The Muse of History: Robert Bolling's Verses on the Norfolk Inoculation Riots of 1768-1769	p. 165
Franklin's Scientific Ethics: Exemplary Rhetoric in the Autobiography	p. 184
Heroic Drama for an Uncertain Age: The Plays of Mercy Warren	p. 192
"Reserved for My Pen": John Davis's Place in American Literature	p. 211
Authority and Genealogy in Mason Locke Weems's Life of Washington	p. 227
Notes on the Contributors	p. 240
Bibliography	p. 242
Books by Harrison T. Meserole	p. 242
Ph.D. Dissertations Directed by Harrison T. Meserole	p. 242
General Bibliography	p. 244
Index	p. 261
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