The Calvinist Roots of the Modern Era

Front Cover
Aliki Barnstone, Michael Tomasek Manson, Carol J. Singley
UPNE, 1997 - Literary Criticism - 317 pages
Multidisciplinary views of Calvinism's dynamic, diverse, and persistent influence on modern American literature and thought.
Many of America's philosophical, social, and religious traditions are founded upon Calvinist beliefs, and that heritage inevitably permeates our literature, too. While the debt of 18th- and 19th-century writers to Calvinism as theological doctrine and secular ideology has already been well documented, this collection of essays traces Calvinism's presence in 20th-century literature and demonstrates its impact as psychological construct, cultural institution, and socio-political model. From Pound to Faulkner, Eliot to Wharton, modern American poets, novelists, and film-makers of different religious, ethnic, and regional backgrounds have breathed in the Calvinist atmosphere. With fresh illuminations of the works of Marianne Moore, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, Elizabeth Bishop, Kate Chopin, and others, this book cuts across disciplines, periods, and genres to examine the presence of such Calvinist concepts as election, conversion experiences, duty, sexual repression, and apocalypse. The editors conclude that, rather than being a monolithic force, Calvinism has "instead been dynamic, as different writers redefine and restructure it to fit their purposes and beliefs."
 

Contents

Loris Mirella
20
Elsa Nettels
36
John J Murphy
53
The Modernist Conversion of Willa Cathers Professor 335
73
Jeredith Merrin
91
Elisa
107
Ivy Schweitzer
125
Aliki Barnstone
145
Susan Goodman
198
Milton J Bates
212
Jonathan N Barron
231
Jane Cocalis
250
Michael Tomasek Manson
263
Rocco Marinaccio
281
Works Cited 297 335
297
Contributors
315

Carol J Singley
162
Cynthia Griffin Wolff
181

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