Humor and revelation in American literature : the Puritan connection /
Covici, Pascal,1930-
Columbia : University of Missouri Press,
c1997.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-222) and index.
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 --
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?
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 --
American wit and humor
Christian literature, American
Wit and humor
American literature
Puritan movements in literature.
Puritans
Revelation in literature.