Title American madonna : images of the divine woman in literary culture / John Gatta

Published New York : Oxford University Press, 1997

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 179 pages) : illustrations Series Religion in America series Religion in America series (Oxford University Press) Contents 1. The Sacred Woman: The Problem of Hawthorne's Madonnas. Of Holy Mothers and Dark Ladies. Hester's Divine Maternity. Queen Zenobia of Blithedale. The New England Maiden and the Fallen Goddess of The Marble Faun. Hawthorne's Search for Sacred Love: From Puritan Fathers to Divine Mothers -- 2. The Virginal Soul of Margaret Fuller's Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Queen Margaret's Mythmaking. "Her own creator": Images of Self-fashioning in Minerva, Leila, and Mary through 1844. The Mary Victoria of Woman in the Nineteenth Century -- 3. Calvinism Feminized: Divine Matriarchy in Harriet Beecher Stowe. Godly Maternity and Motherly Jesus. Birthpangs of the New Order in Uncle Tom's Cabin. The Ministry of Mary in The Minister's Wooing. Other Appearances of the Madonna-Intercessor in Agnes of Sorrento, Poganuc People, and The Pearl of Orr's Island. Sacrament of Mother-Love, Compassion of the Mater Dolorosa -- 4. The Sexual Madonna in Harold Frederic's Damnation of Theron Ware Summary This book explores a notable if unlikely undercurrent of interest in Mary as mythical Madonna that has persisted in American life and letters from 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. Author John Gatta delineates a countercultural pattern of mythic assertion that has yet to be acknowledged in standard surveys of American cultural or literary history. 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 these 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 Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 151-172) and index Notes English Print version record Subject Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint -- In literature Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint -- Devotion to -- United States SUBJECT Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint fast Subject American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism American literature -- Protestant authors -- History and criticism American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism Christianity and literature -- United States Women in literature. Femininity in literature. Women and literature -- United States Christian saints in literature. LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General. American literature American literature -- Protestant authors Christian saints in literature Christianity and literature Devotion Femininity in literature Literature Women and literature Women in literature Letterkunde. Amerikaans. Vrouwen. Vrouwelijkheid. Beeldcultuur. Religieuze aspecten. United States Genre/Form Electronic books Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book LC no. 96048856 ISBN 0585211728 9780585211725 0195354605 9780195354607 9786610453689 6610453683 019511261X 9780195112610 1280453680 9781280453687

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