The Crossroads of American History and Literature

Philip F. Gura

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 1996
• Print ISBN:
  9780271015217
• eBook ISBN:
  9780271076980
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

The Crossroads of American History and Literature collects two decades' worth of the best-known essays of Philip F. Gura. Beginning with a definitive overview of studies of colonial literature, Gura ranges through such subjects in colonial American history as the intellectual life of the Connecticut River Valley, Cotton Mather's understanding of political leadership, and the religious upheavals of the Great Awakening. In the nineteenth century, he visits such varied topics as the history of print culture in rural communities, the philological interests of the Transcendentalist Elizabeth Peabody, the craft and business of the early Amerian music trades, and Thoreau's interest in exploration literature and in the Native American. Displaying remarkable sophistication in a variety of fields that, taken together, constitute the heart of American Studies, this collection illustrates the complexity of American cultural history.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Tangents to a Sphere
• 1. The Study of Colonial American Literature, 1966-1987: A Vade Mecum
• 2. Preparing the Way for Stoddard: Eleazer Mather's Serious Exhortion to Northampton
• 3. Cotton Mather's Life of Phips: "A Vice with the Vizard of Vertue Upon It"
• 4. Solomon Stoddard's Irreverent Way
• 5. Sowing for the Harvest: The Reverend William Williams and the Great Awakening
• 6. Early Nineteenth-Century Printing in Rural Massachusetts: John Howe of Greenwich and Enfield, c. 1803-1845
• 7. The Reverend Parsons Cooke and Ware Factory Village: A New Missionary Field
• 8. The Transcendentalists and Language: The Unitarian Exegetical Background
• 9. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and the Philosophy of Language
• 10. Manufacturing Guitars for the American Parlor: James Ashborn's Wolcottville, Connecticut, Factory, 1851-1856
• 11. Thoreau and John Josselyn
• 12. Thoreau's Maine Woods Indians: More Representative Men
• 13. Language and Meaning: An American Tradition
• Index
• Back Cover