Humor and revelation in American literature : the Puritan connection
"Both the Genteel Tradition and Calvinistic Puritanism exhibited a sense of possessing inside information about the workings of the universe and the intentions of the Almighty. In Humor and Revelation in American Literature, Pascal Covici, Jr., traces this perspective from its early presence to the humorous tradition in America that has been related to the Old Southwest, showing how American Puritan thought was instrumental in the formative stages of American humor. Covici argues that much of American literature works as humor does, surprising readers into sudden enlightenment. The humor from which Mark Twain derived his early models had the same sort of arrogance as American Puritan thought, especially in regard to social and political truths. Twain transcended the roots of that humor, which run from works of nineteenth-century Americans back to British forms of the eighteenth century. In doing so, he helped shape American literature. In addition to reexamining Twain's art, Humor and Revelation in American Literature considers some of the writers long regarded as among the usual suspects in any consideration of cultural hegemony, including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Melville. Covici explores not so much the hypocrisy as the ambivalence repeatedly displayed in American literature. He demonstrates that even though our writers have always had a strong desire to avoid the influences of the past, their independence from its cultural, theological, and psychological effects has been much slower in coming than previously thought. Original and well-written, Humor and Revelation in American Literature will be welcomed by all scholars and critics of American literature, especially those interested in Puritanism, major nineteenth-century writers, Southwestern humor, and Mark Twain."--Publishers website
Print Book, English, ©1997
University of Missouri Press, Columbia, ©1997
Wit and Humor
ix, 226 pages ; 25 cm
9780826210951, 0826210953
35627612
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. 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. 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?