The puritan and the cynic : moralists and theorists in French and American letters

Why do Americans, and so often, American writers, profess moral sentiments and yet write so little in the traditionally "moralistic" genres of maxim and fable? What is the relation between "moral" concerns and literary theory? Can any sort of morality survive the supposed nihilism of deconstruction? Jefferson Humphries undertakes a discussion of questions like these through a comparative reading of the ways in which moral issues surface in French and American literature. Humphries takes issue with the "amoral" view of deconstruction espoused by many of its detractors, arguing that the debate between the theory's advocates and opponents comes down to two opposing literary and moral traditions. While the American tradition views morality as a rigid system capable of being enforced by injunctions along the lines of "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not," the French tradition conceives of morality as a function of a relentless and unsentimental pursuit of truth, and finally, an admission that "truth" is not a static thing, but rather an ongoing process of rigorous thought. This book primarily addresses one question: Why do Americans--and American authors in particular--profess such moral sentiments while engaging so little in the traditionally moralistic literary genres of maxim and fable? As an American who has spent a good deal of time studying the literature of my own country and of France, where the properly moralistic genres flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries--but where there has never been the obsession with morality (in life and literature) that exists in America. These essays consider the various literary environments in both cultures, in which moral issues have arisen, progressing from one to the next, spiraling toward an answer to not one question, but many, and useful answers only as a compendium This book offers a comparative reading of the ways in which moral issues surface in French and American literature.