- Paperback: 360 pages
- Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (May 15 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0299231747
- ISBN-13: 978-0299231743
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 408 g
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“This thoughtful, thoroughly researched work looks at how writers have used Quakers—as heretics, as reformers, as symbols of simplicity and goodness, always as counterpoints to a larger American culture.”—Thomas Hamm, author of The Transformation of American Quakerism
“Ryan has produced a work of remarkable scope and clarity, a fine example of discursive and cultural analysis that encompasses multiple centuries and moves fluidly across political and aesthetic terrains. . . . Neither a history of Quakerism nor a study of their self-representations, Ryan’s books is instead a thoughtful, nuanced examination across periods and genres of ‘the unique role of Quakers...in the formation of American national identity.’ Summing Up: Essential” —Choice
“A pathbreaking effort to catalog the numerous appearances made by Quakers (the Society of Friends) in American print and visual culture. . . . Ryan’s accomplishment rests on his reminder to scholars to take seriously the large role that this small church has played in the cultural history of the United States.” —Ryan P. Jordan, Journal of American History
“Ryan’s book is an estimable example of sturdy literary history, happily free of cumbersome jargon and excessive theorization. His prose is clear and his account well organized and informative. This erudite study will be of interest to historians, Americanists, religion scholars, and the growing number of cultural studies scholars who recognize the value of studying religion as a key element of American cultural history.” —David Morgan, Church History
“Ryan’s Imaginary Friends examines texts by Friends, their admirers, and their opponents, demonstrating a long-standing American fascination with the Society of Friends. Tracing the Quaker presence in texts from the colonial period to the mid-twentieth century, Ryan shows the range of texts—polemics, martyrologies, biographies, stories and novels, plays, and films—featuring Quakers. Drawing on Sacvan Bercovitch and Constance Rourke, he argues that ‘actual Quakers and imagined Quakers’ played a ‘unique role . . . in the formation of American National Identity.’”—Lisa M. Gordis, Early American Literature
Book Description
When Americans today think of the Religious Society of Friends, better known as Quakers, they may picture the smiling figure on boxes of oatmeal. But since their arrival in the American colonies in the 1650s, Quakers’ spiritual values and social habits have set them apart from other Americans. And their example—whether real or imagined—has served as a religious conscience for an expanding nation.
Portrayals of Quakers—from dangerous and anarchic figures in seventeenth-century theological debates to moral exemplars in twentieth-century theater and film (Grace Kelly in High Noon, for example)—reflected attempts by writers, speechmakers, and dramatists to grapple with the troubling social issues of the day. As foils to more widely held religious, political, and moral values, members of the Society of Friends became touchstones in national discussions about pacifism, abolition, gender equality, consumer culture, and modernity.
Spanning four centuries, Imaginary Friends takes readers through the shifting representations of Quaker life in a wide range of literary and visual genres, from theological debates, missionary work records, political theory, and biography to fiction, poetry, theater, and film. It illustrates the ways that, during the long history of Quakerism in the United States, these “imaginary” Friends have offered a radical model of morality, piety, and anti-modernity against which the evolving culture has measured itself.
Portrayals of Quakers—from dangerous and anarchic figures in seventeenth-century theological debates to moral exemplars in twentieth-century theater and film (Grace Kelly in High Noon, for example)—reflected attempts by writers, speechmakers, and dramatists to grapple with the troubling social issues of the day. As foils to more widely held religious, political, and moral values, members of the Society of Friends became touchstones in national discussions about pacifism, abolition, gender equality, consumer culture, and modernity.
Spanning four centuries, Imaginary Friends takes readers through the shifting representations of Quaker life in a wide range of literary and visual genres, from theological debates, missionary work records, political theory, and biography to fiction, poetry, theater, and film. It illustrates the ways that, during the long history of Quakerism in the United States, these “imaginary” Friends have offered a radical model of morality, piety, and anti-modernity against which the evolving culture has measured itself.
Winner, CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book Award
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