Synopses & Reviews
This book suggests a new interpretation of the characteristic qualities of Scottish and American literatures. Professor Manning reveals the "puritan-provincial vision": a particular way of looking at life and man's relationship to what lies beyond himself.
Review
"'Calvinism is the natural theology of the disinherited,' said H.L. Mencken; 'it never flourished, therefore, anywhere as it did in the barren hills of Scotland and in the wilds of North America.' Manning's unusual comparative study is a kind of extended gloss on Mencken's insight, an effort to discern a common Calvinist aesthetic in the Scottish and American literary traditions. At times her single-minded
search for Puritan themes leads her astray: surely Thomas Jefferson and Edgar Allan Poe, whom she attempts to corral within her developing thesis, make rather unlikely Calvinist converts. But many of her comparisons are convincing and striking: for instance, her treatment of Jonathan Edwards and David Hume as latter-day Calvinists responding (quite differently) to the new epistemology of John Locke. And her larger theme—the subtle and complex affinity between Puritan thought and the condition of the provincial—offers a useful approach not only to the Scots and Americans treated here but to any culture touched by the legacy of Calvin." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
"Manning's thoughtful critique shows how contradictory attitudes can arise out of, and in reaction to, a common adherence to absolutes. Her Scottish/American pairings, Home/Edwards, Smith and Jefferson, and so on--are strategically brilliant." London Review of Books"Manning succeeds admirably in conducting an argument that is both ambitious and bright with surprise." Terence Martin, American Literature
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Calvinism and the puritan mind; 2. After Armageddon; Jonathan Edwards and David Hume; 3. From puritanism to provincialism; 4. The pursuit of the double; 5. Spectators, spies and spectacles: the observer's stance; 6. 'Is anything central?'