| FT-259849-18 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Patrick M. Erben | German Pietism and American Literature of the Late 18th and 19th Centuries | 6/1/2018 - 7/31/2018 | $6,000.00 | Patrick | M. | Erben | | | | University of West Georgia | Carrollton | GA | 30118-0001 | USA | 2018 | American Literature | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 | Research leading to an
article and book on the influence of German Pietism on late 18th- and 19th-century
American literature.
My current book project investigates the profound yet neglected role of German Pietism in the development of English-language American literature. A 17th and 18th century religious reform movement, Pietism emphasized a personal and emotional relationship between individuals and the Christian redeemer. The transatlantic spread of Pietism by German immigrants such as the Moravians shaped the occupation with sensibility, feeling, and inwardness in the movement from Enlightenment to Romanticism. My project thus endeavors a major scholarly reassessment of canonical and non-canonical authors of late 18th and 19th-century American literature and upends longstanding origin narratives grounded in what Sacvan Bercovitch called The Puritan Origins of the American Self (1975). During the funding period, I would research and write an article titled “The Cult of Zinzendorf in 19th-Century American Literature and Culture,” examining the American popularity of the founder of the Moravian Church. |