Cohesion and Dissent in AmericaCarol Colatrella, Joseph Alkana SUNY Press, 1994 M01 1 - 252 pages This book addresses one of the most important theories to arise in recent American literary scholarship. Developed over the past two decades, Sacvan Bercovitch s ideas about the relationship of American cultural institutions to voices of dissent have repeatedly posed challenges to pervasive assumptions about American culture and the methods used by cultural critics and literary historians. The contributors to this book respond to different aspects of Bercovitch s ideas by exploring a wide range of scholarly disciplines, including American, Chicano, Amerindian, African-American, Asian-American, feminist, comparatist, philosophical, legal, and critical studies. In addition to essays that focus on the theoretical backgrounds and implications of Bercovitch s concepts, this book interrogates the uses of those concepts in the study of American literatures. Works by a variety of American writers are analyzed: the Colonial poet Phillis Wheatly; nineteenth-century writers Hawthorne and Melville; modernists Pound and Eliot; contemporary authors John Barth, Norman Mailer, Arturo Islas, and John Yau; and philosophers William James and Stanley Cavell. This book offers new directions to students of American culture, while it participates in the ongoing reassessment of American cultural and literary scholarship. |
Contents
Discovering America A CrossCultural Perspective | 3 |
Jewish Critics and American Literature The Case of Sacvan Bercovitch | 31 |
Sacvan Bercovitch Stanley Cavell and the Romance Theory of American Fiction | 48 |
Establishing Modernist Traditions of Dissent | 75 |
T S Eliots American DissentDescent | 77 |
Work on Truth in America The Example of William James | 95 |
The Orient as Pretext for Aesthetic and Cultural Revolution in Modern American Poetry | 114 |
Cohesion Dissent and Contemporary Cultural Boundaries | 131 |
The Hybridity of Culture in Arturo Islass The Rain God | 159 |
Norman Mailer and the Radical Text | 174 |
Problems of Marginality in America | 191 |
Problematizing American Dissent The Subject of Phillis Wheatley | 193 |
Before the Law after the Judgment Schizophrenia in John Barths The Floating Opera | 210 |
Bercovitchs Paradox Critical Dissent Marginality and the Example of Melville | 229 |
Contributors | 251 |
Chaos Goes Uncourted John Yaus DisOrienting Poetics | 133 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic ambiguity Ameri American culture American fiction American Jeremiad American literary American literature American studies Americanists artist Arturo Islas Barth Bercov calls Cambridge Cavell Cavell's Chicago Chinese claims classic American cohesion consensus context criticism critique describes difference discourse dissent Emerson English essay existential experience Ezra Pound Floating Opera Hawthorne Hawthorne's Hester's idea ideal identity ideology individual interpretation Islas Islas's James Japanese poetry Jewish John John Gould Fletcher John Yau language Lowell Mailer means Melville Melville's Miguel Chico modern modernist myth narrative Nietzsche novel Pease Phillis Wheatley philosophy pluralism poem poetic poets political pragmatism Puritan Puritan Origins radical reader reading rhetoric ritual romance Sacvan Bercovitch Scarlet Letter schizophrenia sense social society speak story strategy suggests symbol T. E. Hulme T. S. Eliot theory tion Todd Tommo tradition truth ture Typee University Press verse Wheatley's words writing Yau's York