THORNTON WILDER AND THE PURITAN NARRATIVE TRADITION by Lincoln Konkle ( 9780826216243 )

Item Details

Title:

THORNTON WILDER AND THE PURITAN NARRATIVE TRADITION

By:

Format:

Hardback

List price:	£59.00
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ISBN 10:

0826216242

ISBN 13:

9780826216243

Publisher:

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI PRESS

Pub. date:

20 January, 2006

Pages:

288

Description:

A reading of Wilder's life, fiction, drama, and criticism as a product of American culture. The book also emphasizes aspects of Puritan theology, ideology, and aesthetics that have been suppressed or repressed into our cultural unconscious but are manifested in Wilder's texts in response to various historical or personal stimuli.

Synopsis:

"Thornton Wilder and the Puritan Narrative Tradition" is the first reading of Wilder's life, fiction, drama, and criticism as a product of American culture. Early American studies by Sacvan Bercovitch, Mason Lowance Jr, Emory Elliott, and others have identified aspects of contemporary American culture stemming from New England Puritan writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and classic American literature of the nineteenth century. Lincoln Konkle extends the argument for continuity into both the twentieth century and the profane space of the theater. Konkle shows that Thornton Wilder, as a literary descendant of Edward Taylor, inherited the best of the Puritans' worldview and drew upon those attributes of the Puritan tradition within American literature that would strike a fundamental chord with his American audience. By providing close readings of Wilder's texts against seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Puritan culture and literature, Konkle demonstrates that Wilder's aesthetic was not just generically allegorical but also typically American.He also emphasizes aspects of Puritan theology, ideology, and aesthetics that have been suppressed or repressed into our cultural unconscious but are manifested in Wilder's texts in response to various historical or personal stimuli. Konkle makes an original contribution to Wilder scholarship by providing the first in-depth readings of the full-length play "The Trumpet Shall Sound" and the screenplay "Shadow of a Doubt". Also included are readings of little-known and seldom-discussed dramatic pieces, including "Proserpina and the Devil", "And the Sea Shall Give Up Its Dead", and "Our Century". With its emphasis on the continuities of thought and form found in American literature from the seventeenth century to the twentieth, this analysis of Wilder's drama and fiction will reclaim him as an intrinsically American writer, deserving to be read within the context of American literary and cultural traditions.

Illustrations:

bibliography, index

Publication:

Imprint:

University of Missouri Press

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

STEPHEN VINCENT BENET (PB)

THORNTON WILDER (HB)