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2 results

  • 9 - Reconsidering Moses

  • from Part I - The Blind Ruck of Event
  • Edited by Kathleen Diffley, University of Iowa, Coleman Hutchison, University of Texas, Austin
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
    Published online:
    04 August 2022
    Print publication:
    18 August 2022, pp 135-150

  • Summary

    This chapter explores Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s neglected epic poem “Moses: A Story of the Nile” (1869). It argues that Harper harnessed the biblical story to create spaces for Black history, agency, and action, and thus placed Black voices at the center of debates over faith, the past, and the nation’s future. It recognizes that “Moses” was also a striking artistic experiment for Harper and a text deeply intertwined with her Reconstruction-era oratory. To support a close reading of the poem’s content and form, after establishing basic facts about “Moses” as a printed artifact, the chapter considers Harper’s 1867 and early 1868 lectures as corollaries to the poem’s composition, later 1868 and early 1869 lectures as critical to the poem’s final form, and both groups of lectures as paratexts. The chapter concludes by hinting at how this approach could shape consideration of a broader range of Reconstruction texts.

  • Select bibliography

  • Edited by John Riches, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge History of the Bible
    Published online:
    09 June 2015
    Print publication:
    13 April 2015, pp 759-796

  • Summary

    The Reformation's emphasis on the Bible as the major authority and the appearance of German criticism inspired many writers of the Enlightenment and the age of Romanticism to present biblical characters and stories in a new humanistic light. Writers presented new interpretations of negative or suffering biblical characters who seem to have been unfairly cursed by God including Adam and Eve, Cain, Hagar, Ishmael, and, later in the nineteenth century, Judas and feminine characters like Mary Magdalene. Inspired by the Christian revelation of God as a God of love, literature often rewrites the Bible in a sympathetic and forgiving Spirit. The 'quest for the historical Jesus' in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries produced several academic and fictional concepts and images. Most fictional Jesus narratives belong to second-rate literature. Pontius Pilate traditionally plays an important role in literature about Jesus, presenting the conflict between earthly and divine power and wisdom.