In this Book
- Strange Jeremiahs: Civil Religion and the Literary Imaginations of Jonathan Edwards, Herman Melville, and W. E. B. Du Bois
- Book
- 2010
- Published by: University of New Mexico Press
- Series: Religions of the Americas Series
summary
Over the last few decades the notion of civil religion has gained parlance as a way of making sense of American culture and religion. The term civil religion, often used simply to mean patriotism, refers in this text to the religious styles and rhetoric that emerge from the act of founding of the American Republic as a democratic nation. The author examines the work of three major American authors whose lives span 250 years and who, in spite of their different heritages, all expressed themselves through the tradition of the jeremiad, or prophetic judgment of a people for backsliding from their destiny. Jonathan Edwards, the eighteenth-century theologian whose work defined the Great Awakening, made use of the jeremiad through a theological discourse that defined conversion as a performative act. Stewart demonstrates how Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick, questioned the ideology of American optimism; her focus here falls upon his lesser known and often overlooked novel, Pierre, or the Ambiguities. W. E. B. Du Bois, the preeminent African American intellectual and activist took up the jeremiad from the implications of the Reconstruction.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Table of Contents
- pp. vii-viii
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xiii-xiv
- Introduction
- pp. 1-27
- 2: Original Sin
- pp. 53-77
- 3: God Is No Respecter of Persons
- pp. 78-95
- 6: A Revolutionary Marriage Deferred
- pp. 143-179
- 9: Strivings and Original Sin
- pp. 225-242
- 10: The Talented Tenth and Colonizing Heroes
- pp. 243-264
- Conclusion The Irony of the American Self
- pp. 287-297
- Works Cited
- pp. 349-362
Additional Information
ISBN
9780826346810
Related ISBN(s)
9780826346797
MARC Record
OCLC
759158379
Pages
390
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No