This book explores a notable if unlikely undercurrent of interest in Mary as mythical Madonna that has persisted in American life and letters from fairly early in the nineteenth century into the later twentieth. This imaginative involvement with the Divine Woman -- verging at times on devotional homage -- is especially intriguing as manifested in the Protestant writers who are the focus of this study: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harold Frederic, Henry Adams, and T.S. Eliot. John Gatta argues that flirtation with the Marian cultus offered Protestant writers symbolic compensation for what might be culturally diagnosed as a deficiency of psychic femininity, or anima, in America. He argues that the literary configurations of the mythical Madonna express a subsurface cultural resistance to the prevailing rationalism and pragmatism of the American mind in an age of entrepreneurial conquest.
1101231441
American Madonna: Images of the Divine Woman in Literary Culture
This book explores a notable if unlikely undercurrent of interest in Mary as mythical Madonna that has persisted in American life and letters from fairly early in the nineteenth century into the later twentieth. This imaginative involvement with the Divine Woman -- verging at times on devotional homage -- is especially intriguing as manifested in the Protestant writers who are the focus of this study: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harold Frederic, Henry Adams, and T.S. Eliot. John Gatta argues that flirtation with the Marian cultus offered Protestant writers symbolic compensation for what might be culturally diagnosed as a deficiency of psychic femininity, or anima, in America. He argues that the literary configurations of the mythical Madonna express a subsurface cultural resistance to the prevailing rationalism and pragmatism of the American mind in an age of entrepreneurial conquest.
54.99
In Stock
5
1
American Madonna: Images of the Divine Woman in Literary Culture
American Madonna: Images of the Divine Woman in Literary Culture
eBook
$54.99
$72.99
Save 25%
Current price is $54.99, Original price is $72.99. You Save 25%.
Related collections and offers
54.99
In Stock
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780195354607 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Publication date: | 11/27/1997 |
Series: | Religion in America |
Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
Format: | eBook |
Lexile: | 1560L (what's this?) |
File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
From the B&N Reads Blog