Multidisciplinary views of Calvinism's dynamic, diverse, and persistent influence on modern American literature and thought.

Seventeen critics examine the influence of Calvinism on nineteenth- and twentieth-century American poets, novelists, and filmmakers of various religious, ethnic, and regional backgrounds. In her essay on Dickinson, Barnstone focuses on "Me from Myself - to banish -" (J642), "There's a certain Slant of light" (J258), and the second "Master" letter to show how Dickinson translated her Calvinist inheritance into poetry. Barnstone concludes that "in her ambiguity of meaning, her fragmented form, her doubt and parody of tradition and God, in her finding her home in the wasteland of self-division, and in her transference of meaning from God to poetry, Dickinson anticipated the concerns and techniques of the modernists" and "her work, even more than that of her contemporary Walt Whitman, marks the beginning of American Modernism."
---The Bulletin

Many of America's philosophical, social, and religious traditions are founded upon Calvinist beliefs, and that heritage inevitably permeates our literature, too. While the debt of 18th- and 19th-century writers to Calvinism as theological doctrine and secular ideology has already been well documented, this collection of essays traces Calvinism's presence in 20th-century literature and demonstrates its impact as psychological construct, cultural institution, and socio-political model. From Pound to Faulkner, Eliot to Wharton, modern American poets, novelists, and film-makers of different religious, ethnic, and regional backgrounds have breathed in the Calvinist atmosphere. With fresh illuminations of the works of Marianne Moore, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, Elizabeth Bishop, Kate Chopin, and others, this book cuts across disciplines, periods, and genres to examine the presence of such Calvinist concepts as election, conversion experiences, duty, sexual repression, and apocalypse. The editors conclude that, rather than being a monolithic force, Calvinism has "instead been dynamic, as different writers redefine and restructure it to fit their purposes and beliefs."