Title: Lincoln's miniature Bible : performing sacred history in the Gettysburg Address
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2019, vol. 45, iss. 1, pp. [171]-189
Extent
[171]-189
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2019-1-11
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/141002
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
Analysts of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address have noted its reliance on religious and liturgical language and motifs, but have not fully recognized the intricate way in which is mimics the Bible, replicating the "U-shape" of "type" and "antitype" that Northrop Frye and others have identified as the structuring principle of Christian Scripture. Elaborating this schema with remarkable care, Lincoln in effect re-creates sacred or "salvation" history in miniature, casting the ephemeral words and event of the moment as the focal point of human destiny. The resulting dialectical tension, which counterposes the fleeting or disposable to the profoundly important, refutes – but was also carried forward – in the popular legend that the address was hastily written on the back of an envelope. In other instructive ways, too, it helped to generate the mythic meanings that Americans have attached both to the address and to Lincoln himself.
References
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[38] Wills, Garry (1992) Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. New York: Simon & Schuster.
[39] Wood, Tara (posting as "taraw"). Visitor Center Script: Whitman's Lincoln Lectures (10 December 2009). Looking for Whitman, http://twood.lookingforwhitman.org/2009/12/10/visitor-centerscript-whitmans-lincoln-lectures/.
[2] Andrews, Mary Raymond Shipman (1906) The Perfect Tribute. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
[3] Arnold, Isaac N. (1866) The History of Abraham Lincoln, and the Overthrow of Slavery. Chicago: Clarke & Co.
[4] Auerbach, Erich (2003) Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. by W.R. Trask, 50th anniversary edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[5] Blanchard, Rufus (1882) Abraham Lincoln, The Type of American Genius: An Historical Romance. Wheaton, IL: R. Blanchard & Co.
[6] Boritt: Gabor (2006) The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows. New York: Simon & Schuster.
[7] Donald, David Herbert (2011[1995]) Lincoln. New York: Simon & Schuster.
[8] Dreisbach, Daniel (2013) The Sacred Sounds of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (19 November 2013). Online Library of Law & Liberty, http://www.libertylawsite.org/2013/11/19/thesacredsoundsoflincolnsgettysburgaddress/.
[9] Elmore, A.E. (2009) Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: Echoes of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
[10] Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1910) 24 October 1833. Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1820-1872, Vol. III: 1833-1835. Ed. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press.
[11] Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1838) Divinity School Address (15 July 1838). Emerson Central, https://emersoncentral.com/texts/nature-addresses-lectures/addresses/divinity-school-address/.
[12] Everett, Edward (1863) Gettysburg Address (19 November 1863). Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project. University of Maryland, http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/everett-gettysburgaddress-speech-text/.
[13] Fox, Richard Wightman (2015) Lincoln's Body: A Cultural History. New York: W.W. Norton.
[14] Frye, Northrop and Jay Macpherson (2004[1962]) Biblical and Classical Myths: The Mythological Framework of Western Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
[15] Frye, Northrop (1990[1983]) The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. New York: Penguin Books.
[16] Gannett, Lewis (2005) 'Overwhelming Evidence' of a Lincoln-Ann Rutledge Romance?: Reexamining Rutledge Family Reminiscences. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 26(1).
[17] Herndon, William H. and Jesse William Weik (1888) Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life, Vol. 1. Springfield, IL: The Herndon's Lincoln Publishing Company.
[18] Hodes, Martha (2015) Mourning Lincoln. Yale University Press.
[19] Howe, Julia Ward (1899) Reminiscences, 1819-1899. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin.
[20] Johnson, Martin P. (2013) Writing the Gettysburg Address. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
[21] LaFantasie, Glenn (1995) Lincoln and the Gettysburg Awakening. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 16(1).
[22] Lincoln, "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions" (27 January 1838). Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 6:1 (1984), 10, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0006.103.
[23] Lincoln, "Second Inaugural Address" (4 March 1865). The Avalon Project, Yale Law School Library, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln2.asp.
[24] "Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in Print" (13 June 2016). Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, Indiana State Museum and the Allen County Public Library, http://lincolncollection.tumblr.com/post/145872657819/lincolns-gettysburg-address-in-print.
[25] Maier, Pauline (1998) American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Vintage / Random House.
[26] Noll, Mark A. (1982) The Image of the United States as a Biblical Nation, 1776-1865. In: Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll (eds.) The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press.
[27] Peterson, Merrill D. (1994) Lincoln in American Memory. New York: Oxford University Press.
[28] Poore, Benjamin Perley (1885, 1888) Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time, 6th ed., ed. Allen Thorndike Rice. New York: North American Review.
[29] Smith, Jeff (2009) The Presidents We Imagine: Two Centuries of White House Fictions On the Page, On the Stage, Onscreen, and Online. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
[30] Stampp, Kenneth M. (1950, 1964) And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860-61. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[31] Taylor, Bayard (1869) Gettysburg Ode (Dedication of the National Monument, July 1, 1869). Poetry Nook, http://poetrynook.com/poem/gettysburg-ode-0.
[32] Thurow, Glen E. (1976) Abraham Lincoln and American Political Religion. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
[33] Tierney, Dominic (2010) 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic': America's Song of Itself. The Atlantic, 4 November 2010. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/11/the-battlehymn-of-the-republic-americas-song-of-itself/66070/.
[34] Whitman, Walt. "Death of Abraham Lincoln" (1879, 1880, 1881). In: Kaplan, Justin (ed.) Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose. New York: Library of America, 1982. EPUB file.
[35] Whitman, Walt (1871) Democratic Vistas. In: Kaplan, Justin (ed.) Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose. New York: Library of America, 1982. EPUB file
[36] Whitman, Walt (1855) Preface. Leaves of Grass, 1st ed. (Brooklyn, NY: N.p., 1855). The Walt Whitman Archive, Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska – Lincoln, https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1855/whole.html.
[37] Whitman, Walt (1865) When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (1865, 1891-1892). In: Kaplan, Justin (ed.) Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose. New York: Library of America, 1982. EPUB file.
[38] Wills, Garry (1992) Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America. New York: Simon & Schuster.
[39] Wood, Tara (posting as "taraw"). Visitor Center Script: Whitman's Lincoln Lectures (10 December 2009). Looking for Whitman, http://twood.lookingforwhitman.org/2009/12/10/visitor-centerscript-whitmans-lincoln-lectures/.