Title: American madonna
First published: 1997
Description: This book explores a notable if unlikely undercurrent of interest in Mary as mythical Madonna that has persisted in American life and letters from early in the nineteenth century into the later twentieth. This imaginative involvement with the Divine Woman - verging at times on devotional homage - is especially intriguing as manifested in the Protestant writers who are the focus of this study: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harold Frederic, Henry Adams, and T.S. Eliot.

Author John Gatta delineates a countercultural pattern of mythic assertion that has yet to be acknowledged in standard surveys of American cultural or literary history. Gatta argues that flirtation with the Marian cultus offered Protestant writers symbolic compensation for what might be culturally diagnosed as a deficiency of psychic femininity, or anima, in America.

He argues that these literary configurations of the mythical Madonna express a subsurface cultural resistance to the prevailing rationalism and pragmatism of the American mind in an age of entrepreneurial conquest.
Subjects: History and criticism, American literature, Femininity in literature, Protestant authors, Christian saints in literature, Christianity and literature, Women and literature, In literature, Women in literature, Devotion to, Cult, Beeldcultuur, Vrouwelijkheid, Féminité dans la littérature, Christianisme et littérature, Religieuze aspecten, Culte, Histoire et critique, Amerikaans, Saints chrétiens dans la littérature, Femme (Théologie chrétienne) dans la littérature, Marie, Sainte Vierge, dans la littérature, Letterkunde, Littérature américaine, Vrouwen, Auteurs protestants, Femmes et littérature, Mary, blessed virgin, saint, in literature, Mary, blessed virgin, saint, cult, American literature, history and criticism, 19th century, American literature, history and criticism, 20th century, Marie, Sainte Vierge dans la littérature, LITERARY CRITICISM, American, General, Devotion, Literature
Places: United States, États-Unis
People: Mary Blessed Virgin, Saint, Marie Sainte Vierge, Mary Mother of Jesus Christ
Time periods: 20th century, 19th century, 19e siècle, 20e siècle
LC classification: PS217.M35 G38 1997