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.
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Editorial Reviews
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"Brilliant....Gatta's study is a model for the kind of scholarship at which all of us, at our best, aim. It is fully researched, excellently composed, and full of insight."--Christianity and Literature
"Gatta displays an enviable interdisciplinary mastery of his subject and demonstrates the widespread presence Mary has held in one form or another in American culture. Remarkable for its intelligence and depth."--Choice
"Gatta's study is a model for the kind of scholarship at which all of us, at our best, aim. It is fully researched, excellently composed, and full of insight."--Joseph Schwartz, Marquette University
"This study of a literary counterculture will be appreciated by all with interests in American literature, Marian piety, and the intersection of religious literary motifs and social reality."--Anglican Theological Review
About the Author
John Gatta is Professor of English and English Department Head at the University of Connecticut. His publications, most concerned with religion and literature, include numerous journal articles and an award-winning book on the New England poet Edward Taylor.
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Inside This Book
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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terrible anima, divine womanhood Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Nineteenth Century, Virgin Mother, New England, New York, The Education, Mary Scudder, Sister Soulsby, Uncle Tom's Cabin, United States, New Woman, The Marble Faun, Virgin Mary, The Minister's Wooing, Art Resource, Father Terry, The Dry Salvages, Holy Spirit, Father Forbes, Agnes of Sorrento, Marian Madonna, The Waste Land, Margaret Fuller, Henry Adams, Celia Madden, May Day Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
terrible anima, divine womanhood Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Nineteenth Century, Virgin Mother, New England, New York, The Education, Mary Scudder, Sister Soulsby, Uncle Tom's Cabin, United States, New Woman, The Marble Faun, Virgin Mary, The Minister's Wooing, Art Resource, Father Terry, The Dry Salvages, Holy Spirit, Father Forbes, Agnes of Sorrento, Marian Madonna, The Waste Land, Margaret Fuller, Henry Adams, Celia Madden, May Day Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
4
books
cite this book:
- Anti-Catholicism and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture) by Susan M. Griffin in Back Matter
- Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot by Cassandra Laity on page 252
- The Marriage of Heaven and Earth: Alchemical Regeneration in the Works of Taylor, Poe, Hawthorne, and Fuller (Contributions to the Study of American Literature) by Randall A. Clack in Back Matter
- Word, Birth, and Culture: The Poetry of Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson by Daneen Wardrop in Back Matter
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