Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Be Always Converting, Be Always Converted: An American Poetics

Be Always Converting, Be Always Converted: An American Poetics

Wilson, Rob

Hardcover

Biographies GeneralLiterary Criticism

ISBN10: 0674033434
ISBN13: 9780674033436
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: Jun 1 2009
Pages: 336
Weight: 1.25
Height: 1.20 Width: 6.40 Depth: 9.30
Language: English

Be always converting, and be always converted; turn us again, O Lord, Thomas Shepard urged his Cambridge congregation in the 1640s. This mandate coming down from American Puritan times to New Age seekers, to be always converting, and always converted, places a radical burden on the self as site of renewal and world-change, even as conversion becomes surrounded by deconversion (rejection of prior beliefs) and counterconversion (turns to alternative beliefs) across global modernity.

Rob Wilson's reconceptualization of the American project of conversion begins with the story of Henry 'Ōpūkaha'ia, the first Hawaiian convert to Christianity, torn from the stomach of his Native Pacific homeland and transplanted to New England. Wilson argues that 'Ōpūkaha'ia's conversion is both remarkable and prototypically American, because he dared to redefine himself via this drive to rebirth.

By mapping the poetics and politics of conversion and counterconversion, Wilson returns conversion to its central place in the American literature, history, and psyche. Through 'Ōpūkaha'ia's story, and through the works of the Tongan social scientist and fiction writer Epeli Hau'ofa, Wild West poet Ai, and the mercurial Bob Dylan, Wilson demonstrates that conversion--seemingly an anachronistic concern in this secular age--is instead a global, yet deeply American subject, less about salvation or finality than about experimentation and the quest for modern beatitude.

Also in

Literary Criticism

View All