The Dark Stain: The Role of Innate Depravity in American Literature, 1620-1940

Study of the nature of innate depravity as depicted in classic American literature. Strong links are made with the nature of American Puritanism, the Indian frontier, romanticism and decadence as literary modes. Authors as disparate as Cotton Mather, Edgar Allen Poe, Henry James, Hart Crane, D.H. Lawrence, and William Faulkner are discussed.