| Description |
ix, 226 p. ; 25 cm. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-222) and index. |
| Contents |
Reluctantly independent: the rattling of chains. A problem of respect ; Genteel and vernacular, Josiah Holland and Mark Twain ; Responses, and intimations of crossing over ; American self-reliance? The case of Hawthorne's Robin ; Melville, the American difference, and Richard Chase -- God's chosen people: the Anglican perspective. Megalomaniacal fantasies... ; Megalomania...with a British accent ; Ossa upon Pelion concluded, and then? ; Britain versus the Bay Colony? Yes...and no -- Certainty: Divine or human?: Bishop Burnet and the matter of choice. Religiously political, politically religious ; Of tolerance, intolerance, and Bishop Fleetwood's country curate ; Toleration, belief, and the power(lessness) of the will -- |
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The Puritan roots of American humor. Recognitions of the self ; The loneliness of the Solopsist, no laughing matter ; Emerson's saving rejection of the "Noble Doubt" ; Thoreau's recalcitrant individual fires his pistols ; At the heart of it all, the unknowable remains ; Puritan rejection of Puritan reality-and what about us? |
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Voice, country, and class: reapproaching the vernacular. Mather proposes, Wise disposes ; The triumph of the country, earth and conservative vulgarity ; "The simple Cobler" and the masks of Wise, versus Polly Baker, or, humor slips in when theology blinks ; From Wise and Franklin, Mark Twain's triumphant vernacular -- The basis of laughter: what's so funny? How do we read Polly and Tom? ; Affectation, again-and certainty ; Disgust and gentility ; Gentility, ideality, and responses to mystery, Nick Carraway and Jim Doggett ; Mystery within ; Dr. Holland once more, and the plight of the humorless -- |
| Subject |
American wit and humor -- History and criticism.
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Christian literature, American -- Puritan authors -- History and criticism.
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Wit and humor -- Religious aspects -- Christianity.
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American literature -- History and criticism.
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Puritan movements in literature.
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Puritans -- New England -- Humor.
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Revelation in literature.
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| ISBN |
0826210953 (alk. paper) |
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