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dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11401/77590
dc.description.sponsorshipThis work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.en_US
dc.formatMonograph
dc.format.mediumElectronic Resourceen_US
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherThe Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
dc.typeDissertation
dcterms.abstractThis dissertation explores how the concept of religious enthusiasm shaped American literature and culture from the Revolution through the Civil War. It traces a new narrative of the relation between literature, religion, and public life in this crucial moment of national formation, as languages and narratives of enthusiasm proliferated across a variety of sites and discourses. The ongoing confrontation between the legacy of Enlightenment and a culture being transformed by the experience of revolution and religious revivalism demanded reconsideration of previous conceptions of normative religious experience and the construction of civil society. In the writings of Charles Brockden Brown, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, I show how the intellectual roots and popular manifestations of the concept of religious enthusiasm that circulated in the Atlantic world impacted American literature, and were in turn reimagined and reshaped by that literature. Through an examination of Enlightenment historiography, romantic philosophy, movements of reform and revivalism, and their interaction with the developing literary culture of the new nation, I argue that enthusiasm was an important--if often controversial and ambiguous--concept that contributed to nineteenth-century conceptions of the relationship between religion, literature, and an emerging American public sphere.
dcterms.available2017-09-20T16:52:57Z
dcterms.contributorScheckel, Susanen_US
dcterms.contributorNewman, Andrewen_US
dcterms.contributorRobinson, Benedicten_US
dcterms.contributorReynolds, David.en_US
dcterms.creatorZellner, Lawrence
dcterms.dateAccepted2017-09-20T16:52:57Z
dcterms.dateSubmitted2017-09-20T16:52:57Z
dcterms.descriptionDepartment of English.en_US
dcterms.extent238 pg.en_US
dcterms.formatApplication/PDFen_US
dcterms.formatMonograph
dcterms.identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/11401/77590
dcterms.issued2014-12-01
dcterms.languageen_US
dcterms.provenanceMade available in DSpace on 2017-09-20T16:52:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Zellner_grad.sunysb_0771E_12076.pdf: 1135441 bytes, checksum: 4d90371199e273c43eaf4836e1d5f763 (MD5) Previous issue date: 1en
dcterms.publisherThe Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
dcterms.subjectAmerican literature
dcterms.title" The Vortex of Enthusiasm" : Religion and the Making of American Literature
dcterms.typeDissertation


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