Editorial Reviews
Book Description
In this innovative study, Daniel A. Cohen explores a major cultural shift embodied in hundreds of early New England crime publications. Tracing the declining authority of Puritan ministers, he shows how the arbiters of an increasingly pluralistic literary marketplace gradually supplanted pious execution sermons with last-speech broadsides, gallows verses, criminal autobiographies, trial reports, newspaper stories, and romantic docudramas. "Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace" probes the forgotten origins of our modern mass media’s preoccupation with crime and punishment.
From the Back Cover
"Brilliantly connects changes in American social structure with corresponding shifts in epistemology. . . . Cohen’s careful tracing of a single literary and cultural thread over nearly two centuries opens up a fresh view of the whole fabric of early American experience."--William and Mary Quarterly
"A first-rate piece of historical scholarship, this book will be especially useful to students of print culture, the relationship between law and literature, and the figure of the criminal, but will profit all readers who are interested in American culture."--American Literature
"The way New Englanders packaged and understood crime from the time of Increase Mather to the Civil War superbly illustrates the general evolution of New England culture and helps illuminate via comparison our contemporary understanding of crime and criminal justice."--Law and History Review
Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace: New England Crime Literature And the Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674-1860 (Commonwealth Center Studies in American Culture)
Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace: New England Crime Literature And the Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674-1860 (Commonwealth Center Studies in American Culture),Daniel A. Cohen,University of Massachusetts Press,1558495290,American - General,American literature,General,History and criticism,Literature - Classics / Criticism,Moral and ethical aspects,New England,Popular Culture - General,Popular culture,Popular literature,Social Science,Sociology,United States
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