Word: puritanism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...temptation to extend the differences between the two sections to the people is strong. One immediately thinks to himself: Small town America, pastoral and puritan. Such a conclusion, however, would ultimately be misleading. All the trappings-and attitudes-of modern civilization can be found in Great Barrington. It is no Shangri...
Apart from its manifold defects, Salvation, like all Modcom products, trades on the residual puritanism behind its ostensibly anti-puritan outlook. A people at ease with sexuality, and casually and thoroughly iconoclastic, would not pay good money to see an inept affirmation of a puerile paganism...
...less intelligent and less hung-up novelists than Miss Drabble, the Jameses of literature have been just the priapic princes to deliver a fair princess from her prison tower. For Miss Drabble, sexual love can also lead to the ultimate trap in which puritan self finally gives hedonist self the punishment it deserves. "I will invent a morality that condones me," Jane cries in desperation. "Though by doing so, I risk condemning all that I have been...
...throws herself into "pure corrupted love," with Romeo and Juliet sounding doom in her mind: "These violent delights have violent ends." And in due course, another potency symbol-this time an Aston Martin-nearly kills the lovers. A curious kind of post-catastrophe serenity enters the novel. The puritan's dues have been paid, and for the moment all is in equilibrium. Jane, a blocked poet, can even write again...
...Marcuse calls it, to modern urban technology and the civilization it has produced. With surpassing ease and a cool sense of authority, the children of plenty have voiced an intention to live by a different ethical standard than their parents accepted. The pleasure principle has been elevated over the Puritan ethic of work. To do one's own thing is a greater duty than to be a useful citizen. Personal freedom in the midst of squalor is more liberating than social conformity with the trappings of wealth. Now that youth takes abundance for granted, it can afford to reject materialism...