Of saints and sinners: religion and the Civil War and Reconstruction novel

Exploring religious themes, idioms, and language in Albion Tourgée's and Thomas Dixon Jr.'s most noteworthy novels on the Civil War and Reconstruction, this study suggests that religion provided a critically important medium to discuss sectional and race relations. Attention to religion ex...

Description complète

Enregistré dans:  
Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Blum, Edward J. (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
Vérifier la disponibilité: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
En cours de chargement...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Publié: Creighton University 2002
Dans: The journal of religion & society
Année: 2002, Volume: 4
Sujets non-standardisés:B Thomas
B Tourgée
B Albion Winegar
B 1838-1905
B Southern States in literature
B 1864-1946
B American literature; 1800-1899
B Southern States; Race relations
B Dixon
B United States; History; 1861-1865 (Civil War)
Accès en ligne: Volltext (kostenfrei)
Volltext (kostenfrei)
Description
Résumé:Exploring religious themes, idioms, and language in Albion Tourgée's and Thomas Dixon Jr.'s most noteworthy novels on the Civil War and Reconstruction, this study suggests that religion provided a critically important medium to discuss sectional and race relations. Attention to religion exposes both differencesandsimilarities in these texts. While Dixon described northern faith as corrupt, Tourgée viewed southern Christianity as hypocritical; although Dixon mocked northern missionaries as blunderers, Tourgée praised them as angels sent from heaven. But the authors shared several positions as well. They depicted the Ku Klux Klan as a quasi-religious organization, acknowledged the position of southern churches as locations of cultural hegemony, and believed that religion must play a role in regional reconciliation. Ultimately, this study challenges historians and literary critics to move beyond mere examinations of the racial and gender issues in Tourgée's and Dixon's novels by demonstrating how sectional, racial, and gender ideologies were often explained and mediated by religious beliefs and language.
ISSN:1522-5658
Contient:Enthalten in: The journal of religion & society
Persistent identifiers:HDL: 10504/64395