The Puritan and the Cynic: Moralists and Theorists in French and American LettersWhy do Americans, and so often, American writers, profess moral sentiments and yet write so little in the traditionally "moralistic" genres of maxim and fable? What is the relation between "moral" concerns and literary theory? Can any sort of morality survive the supposed nihilism of deconstruction? Jefferson Humphries undertakes a discussion of questions like these through a comparative reading of the ways in which moral issues surface in French and American literature. Humphries takes issue with the "amoral" view of deconstruction espoused by many of its detractors, arguing that the debate between the theory's advocates and opponents comes down to two opposing literary and moral traditions. While the American tradition views morality as a rigid system capable of being enforced by injunctions along the lines of "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not," the French tradition conceives of morality as a function of a relentless and unsentimental pursuit of truth, and finally, an admission that "truth" is not a static thing, but rather an ongoing process of rigorous thought. |
Contents
| 3 | |
Blaise Pascal Cotton Mather Jonathan Edwards and the Sorcery of Rhetoric | 26 |
Maurice Blanchot Paul de Man and Marcel Proust | 45 |
Deconstruction and the Commonplace Tradition | 56 |
La Fontaine and Joel Chandler Harris | 75 |
The Advent of the Antimaxim | 91 |
7 Afterword | 105 |
Works Cited | 107 |
Index | 111 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
allegory American aphorism aphoristic appears autre believe Blanchot Brer Bruyère C'est Chamfort chiasmus chunes Cicero classical common commonplace concept Cotton Mather critics death deconstruction desire discourse divine Edited Edwards embrace enact epigram epigrammatic Èsù fable fact fait Fontaine fragment fragmentary Franklin French genre grapes Harris human illusion integrity involuntary memory irony knowledge La Bruyère La Rochefoucauld Lacan language Lentricchia less literary literature Logos Man's masks Mather Maurice Blanchot meaning metaphor moral moralist n'est nature never original paradox particular Pascal perception pleasure poem poet poetry Poor Richard possible Proust pure puritan qu'il question Quintillian rabbit reader reading reflects René Char repeated repetition represent rhetoric Rochefoucauld signifying story subject and object temporal temps tension thing thought tout translation trope truth Uncle Remus Vauvenargues virtue wisdom witchcraft words writer of maxims Young Goodman Brown