The Persistence of Purgatory
Cambridge University Press, 1/26/1996
EAN 9780521550390, ISBN10: 0521550394
Hardcover, 220 pages, 21.6 x 13.8 x 1.6 cm
Language: English
Richard K. Fenn focuses on the significance of time in modern society, and why we take it so seriously. He traces contemporary western attitudes toward time back to the doctrine and myth of Purgatory. Fenn makes a provocative case that especially for Americans the sense of the scarcity of time is a sign of social character, shaped by a 'purgatorial complex'. He demonstrates the impact of Purgatory on Protestant preachers such as Baxter and Channing, but also argues that Locke's views of religion, education and the nature of the state can only be understood in this context. Seriousness about time has become evidence of the good faith of the citizen. Novelists like Robbins, Mailer, Vonnegut and Brautigan portray a society that oppresses the individual through time constraints. For Dickens, America seemed a purgatorial wasteland: a place where time is always of the essence.
Introduction
Testing claims to grace
the intensification of time
1. Silent anguish
distinguishing the cure for soul-loss from the disease
2. Purgatory as a way of life
time as the essence of the soul
3. The modern self emerges
Baxter, Locke and the prospect of heaven
4. Locke, reason and the soul
5. The American purgatory and the state
6. Protestants and Catholics in the American purgatory
7. Charles Dickens in the American purgatory
the eternal foreground
Epilogue.