The Pragmatist Turn: Religion, the Enlightenment, and the Formation of American Literature (Studies in Religion and Culture)

Synopsis

In The Pragmatist Turn, renowned scholar of American literature and thought Giles Gunn offers a new critical history of the way seventeenth-century religion and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment influenced the formation of subsequent American writing. This shaping was dependent on their pragmatic refiguration less as systems of belief and thought than as frames of reflection and structures of feeling, what he calls spiritual imaginaries.Drawing on a large number of figures from earlier periods and examining how they influenced generations of writers from the nineteenth century into the early twenty-first —including Henry Adams, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, William James, Henry James, Kenneth Burke, and Toni Morrison—Gunn reveals how the idea or symbolic imaginary of "America" itself was drastically altered in the process.As only a seasoned scholar can, Gunn here presents the history of American religion and literature in broad strokes necessary to reveal the seismic philosophical shifts that helped form the American canon.

Copyright:

2017

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

218 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780813940823

Publisher:

University of Virginia Press

Date of Addition:

10/19/20

Copyrighted By:

the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Religion and Spirituality, Language Arts, Philosophy

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.