"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God": Some Unfinished Business
2000; The MIT Press; Volume: 73; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/366800
ISSN1937-2213
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoNEITHER in the height of popularity enjoyed while living nor in the fall from grace experienced thereafter does Jonathan Edwards approach the literary trajectory of a Longfellow. Still, one cannot help but conclude that Edwards is a casualty of the decentering of Puritanism and the devaluing of religious writing signaled by Philip Gura over a decade ago.' Though the editors of the Jonathan Edwards Reader, published since Gura issued his vade mecum, rightly label Edwards colonial America's greatest theologian and philosopher ... the towering figure of an age in which religion predominated,' the study of our early literature now begins in pre-Columbian Native America and ranges from charms to corridos. Such a broadening of focus has necessarily had its effect on the attention we devote to the Great White Fathers of our past. Thus we watch Edwards's presence in an oft frequented literary museum like the Heath Anthology of American Literature shrink from nine selections over sixty-seven pages to four over thirtyfour just across the three editions published in the 199os.3 Whatever the vagaries of critical whittling, however, I think it is still safe to say that there will never be an American literature without Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. It is simply
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