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Palgrave Macmillan

The Bible in American Poetic Culture

Community, Conflict, War

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Authors:
  1. Shira Wolosky

    1. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

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  • The first study to focus on the Bible and American poetry
  • Organized around topics that together represent major moments and issues of American culture
  • Presents both popular and major authors across the American poetic tradition

Part of the book series: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics (MPCC)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Biblical Disputes in American Polity and Poetics

    • Shira Wolosky
    Pages 1-12

  3. Puritan Hebraism: Anne Bradstreet, John Cotton, Edward Taylor

    • Shira Wolosky
    Pages 13-75

  4. Biblical Poetic Wars: Covenant, Millennium, Apocalypse

    • Shira Wolosky
    Pages 77-112

  5. The Bible Divided Against Itself: Abolition, Slave Spirituals

    • Shira Wolosky
    Pages 113-153

  6. Rewriting Scripture: Emerson, Whitman, Melville

    • Shira Wolosky
    Pages 155-200

  7. Emily Dickinson’s Biblical Contests: Authority, Gender, History

    • Shira Wolosky
    Pages 201-231

  8. Women’s Bibles, White and Black: Twentieth Century and Beyond

    • Shira Wolosky
    Pages 233-291

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 293-297
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Keywords

About this book

Although the Bible is the foundation of American poetic tradition, there is no study of the Bible as an ongoing force in American poetry. Not only a source of imagery, allusion, rhythm and style, the Bible is central to how poetry has both shaped and been shaped by American civic, political, and social history, including issues of ethnicity, race and gender. Through poetry core issues of the Bible in American culture emerge in a new light. What defines America as a nation? What are its historical, political and religious meanings and direction? Vitally, how is it that the Bible is at once a shared common text, binding community, and yet was throughout American culture also contested, disputed, and politicized as a weapon of war? This study begins with the Puritans, and goes on to examine poetry of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, as well as claims and counterclaims in abolition, slavery, and women’s rights. In doing so it treats both popular and major writers, including Edward Taylor,Frances Harper, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Moore and Gwendoln Brooks, concluding with Amanda Gorman.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Shira Wolosky

About the author

Shira Wolosky is Professor of English and American Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Previous publications include Emily Dickinson: A Voice of War (1984), Poetry and Public Discourse in Nineteenth Century America (2010), and Feminist Theory across Disciplines: Feminist Community and American Women's Poetry (2013). Her awards and research appointments include a Fulbright Fellowship, a Whiting Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fellowships at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton, a Tikvah Fellowship at NYU Law School, and Drue Heinz Visiting Professorships at Oxford.

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