Providence Tales and the Birth of American Literature - Rilegato

Hartman, James D.

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 080186027X ISBN 13: 9780801860270

Casa editrice: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Riassunto

In colonial America, tales about the capture of English settlers by Native American war parties and their subsequent suffering and privations were wildly popular among readers. In these captivity narratives, writers such as Mary Rowlandson, Jonathan Dickinson and John Williams told autobiographical stories which combined images of brutal violence with examples of spiritual fortitude. In their accounts, as well as in similar and equally popular tales of witchcraft, exploration and seawreck, lie the roots of an American literature, providing distinct patterns for later writers from James Fenimore Cooper to Herman Melville. In this text, James D. Hartman seeks to uncover the genesis of the captivity narrative in the English providence tale and its transformation in the 17th century. Accounts of miracles, answered prayers and divine judgements in the form of natural catastrophes meant to prove the existence of God have always been a staple of religious literature. But, as Hartman details, in 17th-century England, religious writers were faced with challenges to their faith by the increasingly vital cultural forces of empiricism, scepticism and atheism. Creators of providence tales responded to this challenge by appropriating the language of scientific methodology. They also attempted to broaden their audience by adding violence, sentimentality, melodrama, and other attributes of secular literature to their otherwise spiritual tales.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"Hartman has written an undeniably significant work that will be an invaluable source for those researching providential literature as well as for those seeking to understand the providential roots of the American novel... the scholarship is impeccable." -- Elizabeth Barnes, American Literature

"There is a real wealth of information in this book, and Hartman provides several stimulating interpretive frameworks through which to approach a wide-ranging body of work." -- Christopher Castiglia, Modern Philology

"By elucidating the transatlantic literary conversation that took place between Britain and the North American colonies, Hartman has made a welcome addition to the growing body of scholarly writing that places issues in 'American' nation-formation not in the nineteenth century but squarely in the middle of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Anglo-American literary marketplace of ideas. This is an interesting and indeed splendid study in English colonial intellectual and literary history, and an important contribution to the study of American letters." -- Carla Mulford, Pennsylvania State University, colonial and eighteenth-century editor of The Heath Anthology of American Literature

"Hartman's impressive grounding of the captivity stories in a well-established tradition of providential narratives revises interpretations that attempt to describe the writings of Mary Rowlandson and other early Indian captives as indigenous productions that reflect an exceptionalist frontier experience. An important contribution to our understanding of the early captivity narratives as well as to our knowledge of the imaginative world of late seventeenth-century England and New England." -- Frank Shuffelton, University of Rochester, editor of A Mixed Race: Ethnicity in Early America

L'autore:

James D. Hartman teaches English and humanities at the the DeVry Institute in Long Island City, New York.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 1999
• ISBN 10: 080186027X
• ISBN 13: 9780801860270
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 216