Title: The American Puritan elegy
Subtitle: a literary and cultural study
First published: 2000
Description: "Jeffrey Hammond's study takes an anthropological approach to the most popular form of poetry in early New England - the funeral elegy. Hammond reconstructs the historical, theological and cultural contexts of these poems to demonstrate how they responded to a specific process of mourning defined by Puritan views on death and grief.

The elegies emerge, he argues, not as "poems" to be read and appreciated in a postromantic sense, but as performative scripts that consoled readers by shaping their experience of loss in accordance with theological expectation."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: History and criticism, American poetry, History, Literature and anthropology, Intellectual life, Christianity and literature, Death in literature, Puritan authors, Puritans, Grief in literature, American Elegiac poetry, Histoire, Litterature et anthropologie, Mort dans la littérature, Poetry, Christianisme et littérature, Histoire et critique, Chagrin dans la littérature, Poesie elegiaque americaine, Auteurs puritains, Mort dans la litterature, Vie intellectuelle, Poésie élégiaque américaine, Poesie americaine, Christianisme et litterature, Colonial period, LITERARY CRITICISM, Chagrin dans la litterature, Puritains, Poésie américaine, Littérature et anthropologie, American literature, history and criticism, colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
Places: New England
Time periods: Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
LC classification: PS309.E4 H36 2000