The Crossroads of American History and Literature

The Crossroads of American History and Literature collects two decades' worth of the best-known essays of Philip F. Gura. Beginning with a definitive overview of studies of colonial literature, Gura ranges through such subjects in colonial American history as the intellectual life of the Connecticut River Valley, Cotton Mather's understanding of political leadership, and the religious upheavals of the Great Awakening. In the nineteenth century, he visits such varied topics as the history of print culture in rural communities, the philological interests of the Transcendentalist Elizabeth Peabody, the craft and business of the early Amerian music trades, and Thoreau's interest in exploration literature and in the Native American. Displaying remarkable sophistication in a variety of fields that, taken together, constitute the heart of American Studies, this collection illustrates the complexity of American cultural history.

“Crossroads is a significant book for two reasons: the essays it contains remain a rich repository of high quality scholarship on American literature and cultural history, and it models the rigors and rewards of a prolonged commitment to a set of methodologies and lines of inquiry directed not by academic fashion but by an unflagging desire to pursue the meaning of complex cultural questions.”—American Literature

“This collection offers two particularly appealing elements—Gura's coverage of two of the most important intellectual movements in America before the Civil War, Puritanism and Transcendentalism, and the theoretical position that informs the volume, a consciousness of the importance of the interdisciplinary connections between intellectual and cultural history, as it is practiced in history departments, and literary criticism, as it is practiced in English departments.”—David M. Robinson, Oregon State University

Philip F. Gura is Professor of English and Adjunct Professor of American Studies and Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Wisdom of Words: Language, Theology, and Literature in the American Renaissance (1981) and A Glimpse of Sion's Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620–1660 (1984), and editor, with Joel Myerson, of Critical Essays on American Transcendentalism (1982).

History

           U.S.

Literary Studies

           American Literature

Religious Studies & Religion

           History of Religion