Title The Shamrock and the Cross : Irish American Novelists Shape American Catholicism

Published University of Notre Dame Press, 2016

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Description 1 online resource (263 pages) Contents Cover; Title Page; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter 1 The Origins of American Catholic Fiction; Chapter 2 The Irish Americans: Creating a Memory of the Past; Chapter 3 American Anti-Catholicism: The Uses of Prejudice; Chapter 4 Catholics and Religious Liberty; Chapter 5 The Anti-Protestant Novel; Chapter 6 The Church as Family; Chapter 7 The Maternal Priest; Chapter 8 A Woman's Place: Making the Communal Home; Chapter 9 Catholics and Economic Success; Chapter 10 American Politics: Catholics as Patriotic Outsiders; Conclusion; Notes Summary "In The Shamrock and the Cross: Irish American Novelists Shape American Catholicism, Eileen P. Sullivan traces changes in nineteenth-century American Catholic culture through a study of Catholic popular literature. Analyzing more than thirty novels spanning the period from the 1830s to the 1870s, Sullivan elucidates the ways in which Irish immigration, which transformed the American Catholic population and its institutions, also changed what it meant to be a Catholic in America. In the 1830s and 1840s, most Catholic fiction was written by American-born converts from Protestant denominations; after 1850, most was written by Irish immigrants or their children, who created characters and plots that mirrored immigrants' lives. The post-1850 novelists portrayed Catholics as a community of people bound together by shared ethnicity, ritual, and loyalty to their priests rather than by shared theological or moral beliefs. Their novels focused on poor and working-class characters; the reasons they left their homeland; how they fared in the American job market; and where they stood on issues such as slavery, abolition, and women's rights. In developing their plots, these later novelists took positions on capitalism and on race and gender, providing the first alternative to the reigning domestic ideal of women. Far more conscious of American anti-Catholicism than the earlier Catholic novelists, they stressed the dangers of assimilation and the importance of separate institutions supporting a separate culture. Given the influence of the Irish in church institutions, the type of Catholicism they favored became the gold standard for all American Catholics, shaping their consciousness until well into the next century"-- Provided by publisher Notes Selected BibliographyIndex Print version record Subject Catholic Church -- In literature. SUBJECT Catholic Church fast Subject American fiction -- Irish American authors -- History and criticism American fiction -- Catholic authors -- History and criticism American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism Catholics -- United States -- Intellectual life Catholic fiction -- History and criticism Catholics in literature. LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General. HISTORY -- United States -- 19th Century. American fiction American fiction -- Catholic authors American fiction -- Irish American authors Catholic fiction Catholics in literature Catholics -- Intellectual life Literature United States Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book ISBN 9780268092931 0268092931

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