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Sacred Estrangement : The Rhetoric of Conversion in Modern American Autobiography / Peter A. Dorsey.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: University Park, PA : Penn State University Press, [2021]Copyright date: ©1993Description: 1 online resource (228 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780271073422
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 810.9/382 20
LOC classification:
  • PS366.A88 D67 1993
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION Conversion and the Autobiographical Tradition -- 1 THE CHRISTIAN FRAMEWORK -- 2 DIVIDING THE WORD Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Consequences of Secularization -- 3 CONVERSION TO PRAGMATISM The Varieties of Religious Experience and The Education of Henry Adams -- 4 CONVERSION TO SIGNIFICATION The Autobiography of Henry James -- 5 CONVERSION AND SEPARATION Edith Wharton's Backward Glance and Ellen Glasgow's Woman Within -- 6 THE VARIETIES OF BLACK EXPERIENCE Zora Neale Hurston' s Dust Tracks on a Road and the Autobiography of Richard Wright -- AFTERWORD Conversion and Cultural Poetics -- WORKS CITED -- INDEX
Summary: Sacred Estrangement analyzes certain works by important American writers and thinkers in the context of the ";rhetoric of conversion."; Such analysis is especially valuable because it provides a reliable index of the relationship between the self and larger communities. Traditionally, ";conversion"; has served a socializing function, signifying that one has come into alignment with certain linguistic, behavioral, and cultural expectations. The socialization process is particularly apparent in the Christian conversion narratives of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries: by publicly testifying to a conversion experience, believers became empowered members, not only of God's elect community but also of a local population. As modern autobiography developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Christian pattern was secularized and individualized. Conversion became a model for many kinds of psychological change. With the coming of the twentieth century, however, the authors upon whom Peter Dorsey focuses, including William and Henry James, Henry Adams, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright, radically revised conversion rhetoric. If conversion had traditionally linked the search for illumination with the search for a defined social role, these writers increasingly used conversion as an index of estrangement from mainstream America. Dorsey documents this profound change in the way American intellectuals defined the ";self,"; not in terms of personal orientation toward or away from a given community, but as a resistance to such an orientation altogether, as if social forces by their ";nature"; were a threat to personal identity.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780271073422

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION Conversion and the Autobiographical Tradition -- 1 THE CHRISTIAN FRAMEWORK -- 2 DIVIDING THE WORD Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Consequences of Secularization -- 3 CONVERSION TO PRAGMATISM The Varieties of Religious Experience and The Education of Henry Adams -- 4 CONVERSION TO SIGNIFICATION The Autobiography of Henry James -- 5 CONVERSION AND SEPARATION Edith Wharton's Backward Glance and Ellen Glasgow's Woman Within -- 6 THE VARIETIES OF BLACK EXPERIENCE Zora Neale Hurston' s Dust Tracks on a Road and the Autobiography of Richard Wright -- AFTERWORD Conversion and Cultural Poetics -- WORKS CITED -- INDEX

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Sacred Estrangement analyzes certain works by important American writers and thinkers in the context of the ";rhetoric of conversion."; Such analysis is especially valuable because it provides a reliable index of the relationship between the self and larger communities. Traditionally, ";conversion"; has served a socializing function, signifying that one has come into alignment with certain linguistic, behavioral, and cultural expectations. The socialization process is particularly apparent in the Christian conversion narratives of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries: by publicly testifying to a conversion experience, believers became empowered members, not only of God's elect community but also of a local population. As modern autobiography developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Christian pattern was secularized and individualized. Conversion became a model for many kinds of psychological change. With the coming of the twentieth century, however, the authors upon whom Peter Dorsey focuses, including William and Henry James, Henry Adams, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright, radically revised conversion rhetoric. If conversion had traditionally linked the search for illumination with the search for a defined social role, these writers increasingly used conversion as an index of estrangement from mainstream America. Dorsey documents this profound change in the way American intellectuals defined the ";self,"; not in terms of personal orientation toward or away from a given community, but as a resistance to such an orientation altogether, as if social forces by their ";nature"; were a threat to personal identity.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 21. Jun 2021)