Research Catalog

Title

Humor and revelation in American literature : the Puritan connection / Pascal Covici, Jr.

Author

Covici, Pascal, 1930-1997.

Publication

Columbia : University of Missouri Press, 1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

226 pages; 24 cm

Subjects

• Christian literature, American > Puritan authors > History and criticism
• American wit and humor > History and criticism
• Puritans > New England > Humor
• American literature > History and criticism
• Revelation in literature
• Wit and humor > Religious aspects > Christianity
• Puritan movements in literature

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

• I. Reluctantly Independent: The Rattling of Chains. 1. A Problem of Respect. 2. Genteel and Vernacular: Josiah Holland and Mark Twain. 3. Responses, and Intimations of Crossing Over. 4. American Self-Reliance? The Case of Hawthorne's Robin. 5. Melville, the American Difference, and Richard Chase -- II. God's Chosen People: The Anglicans Perspective. 1. Megalomaniacal Fantasies... 2. Megalomania ... With a British Accent. 3. Ossa upon Pelion Concluded: And Then? 4. Britain Versus the Bay Colony? Yes ... and No -- III. Certainty: Divine or Human?: Bishop Burnet and the Matter of Choice. 1. Religiously Political, Politically Religious. 2. Of Tolerance, Intolerance, and Bishop Fleetwood's Country Curate. 3. Toleration, Belief, and the Power(lessness) of the Will -- IV. Voice, Country, and Class: Reapproaching the Vernacular. 1. Mather Proposes, Wise Disposes. 2. The Triumph of the Country: Earthy and Conservative Vulgarity.
• 3. "The Simple Cobler" and the Masks of Wise, Versus Polly Baker: Or, Humor Slips in When Theology Blinks. 4. From Wise and Franklin, Mark Twain's Triumphant Vernacular -- V. The Basis of Laughter: What's So Funny? 1. How Do We Read Polly and Tom? 2. Affectation, Again - and Certainty. 3. Disgust and Gentility. 4. Gentility, Ideality, and Responses to Mystery: Nick Carraway and Jim Doggett. 5. Mystery Within. 6. Dr. Holland Once More, and the Plight of the Humorless -- VI. The Puritan Roots of American Humor. 1. Recognitions of the Self. 2. The Loneliness of the Solipsist: No Laughing Matter. 3. Emerson's Saving Rejection of the "Noble Doubt" 4. Thoreau's Recalcitrant Individual Fires His Pistols. 5. At the Heart of All, The Unknowable Remains. 6. Puritan Rejection of Puritan Reality - And What About Us?

ISBN

0826210953 (alk. paper)

LCCN

96043457

OCLC

• 35627612
• ocm35627612

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries