America's Gothic Fiction: The Legacy of Magnalia Christi AmericanaOhio State University Press, 2007 - 161 من الصفحات Secretary to the Salem witch trials, Cotton Mather is the most reviled of our national historians. Yet James Russell Lowell admitted that "with all his faults, that conceited old pedant contrived to make one of the most entertaining books ever written on this side of the water." In America's Gothic Fiction, Dorothy Z. Baker investigates the ways in which nineteenth-century authors Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, among others, look to Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana at critical moments in their work and refashion his historical accounts as gothic fiction. Cotton Mather's 1702 Magnalia captured the imagination of its readers more than any other colonial history and impressed Americans with its message of American exceptionalism and God's dramatic intervention on behalf of the country and its citizens. Poe, Stowe, and Hawthorne, who are rarely grouped together in literary studies, have radically divergent responses to Mather's theology, historiography, and literary forms. However, each takes up Mather's themes and forms and, in distinct ways, interrogates the providence tales in Magnalia Christi Americana as foundational statements about American history and identity. |
طبعات أخرى - عرض جميع المقتطفات
عبارات ومصطلحات مألوفة
Alice Doane's Appeal argues argument Arthur Gordon Pym asserts authority belief Black Cat book six Boston Calvinist Catharine Maria Sedgwick chapter characters claim colonial contemporary Cotton Mather Cotton Mather's Magnalia crime critical David Swan death divine providence early American England essay Ethan Frome faith gallows genre God's gothic Grandfather's Chair Hannah Duston Harriet Beecher Stowe Hawthorne's Hayden White historian historical narrative historiographic Hope Leslie identify Increase Mather language Likewise literary Magnalia Christi Americana Mara Lincoln Mather's accounts Mather's providence Maule minister Minister's Wooing Moses murder Narrative of Arthur narrator's Nathaniel Hawthorne native Americans nineteenth-century novel offers Orr's Island Pearl of Orr's plot Poe's narrator providence tale providential history providential literature Puritan Pym's Pyncheon reader recognize recounts religious reveals Roxy Salem sea deliverances sermons Seven Gables six of Magnalia speaks statement story Stowe's tion understanding University Press voice Wharton William Wilson witchcraft witches woman women writing young