Description
Book SynopsisCombining literary and historical insights and attention to the context of other American writings about Palestine, this book throws light on the construction of American identity in the nineteenth century.
Trade Review"American Palestine is an incisive, well-informed, and consistently engaging book."--Robert Milder, Nineteenth-Century Literature
Table of ContentsPreface: Manias and Materialities ix Acknowledgments xix PART ONE: Excavating American Palestine Chapter One Holy Lands and Settler Identities 3 Chapter Two George Sandys: "Double Travels" and Colonial Encounters 14 Chapter Three "Christianography" and Covenant 24 Chapter Four Reading and Writing Sacred Geography 39 PART Two: "The Fatal Embrace of the Deity": Herman Melville's Pilgrimage to Failure in Clarel Chapter Five "A Profound Remove": Annihilation and Covenant 63 Chapter Six "That Strange Pervert": The Puritan Zionist 84 Chapter Seven "The Great Jewish Counterfeit Detector": Warder Cresson, "Carnal" Hermeneutics, and Zion's Body 114 Chapter Eight Ungar "His Way Eccentric": The Confederate Cherokee's Map of Palestine 138 PART THREE: The Guilties Abroad: Mark Twain's Comic Appropriation of the Holy Land in Innocents Abroad Chapter Nine Authority and Authenticity 161 Chapter Ten The Jaffa Colonists and Other Failures 177 Chapter Eleven "A White Man So Nervous and Uncomfortable and Savage" 190 Chapter Twelve "Rejected Gospels": The Boyhood of Jesus 198 Chapter Thirteen Reverence and Race 216 Chapter Fourteen The "Cultivated Negro" and the Curse of Ham 227 Chapter Fifteen Desolating Narrations: Tom Sawyer's Crusade 248 Chapter Sixteen Desolating Narrations: "Der Jude Mark Twain" 262 Notes 275 Index 311
