UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Temperance in American Literature

Book Jacket: "The Serpent in the Cup" edited by D.S. Reynolds and D. J. Rosenthal

Edited by David S. Reynolds and Debra J. Rosenthal

Stimulating essays on the ambivalent American attitude toward alcohol

Writing about the physical and moral dangers of intoxication has long been a feature of American culture, from the anti-alcohol diatribes of colonial clergymen to the confessional narratives of contemporary A.A. members. This book examines the rich history of that literature, affirming the centrality of temperance as a reform movement at least equal in importance to the abolitionist, suffrage, and labor movements.

Each of the ten essays included in the volume explores some aspect of the ongoing American battle with the bottle. Topics range from the cultural role of the tavern in the eighteenth century to the dark imagery of temperance writing in the nineteenth to the emergence of the "disease paradigm" of alcoholism in the twentieth. In addition to analyzing shifting American attitudes toward alcohol, the contributors evaluate the significance of drinking across lines of religion, ethnicity, class, gender and race.

Contributors are David Shields, David S. Reynolds, Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Robert S. Levine, John W. Crowley, Nicholas O. Warner, Debra J. Rosenthal, Edmund B. O'Reilly, and Joan Hedrick, whose concluding essays recounts a women's studies course on the culture of drink.

"This volume is really the first serious contribution to the field. I found all the essays, without exception, stylistically and substantively a delight to read. From David Shields's authoritative and witty piece on taverns to Edmund O'Reilly's 'Bill's Story'—the first really good literary critique of The Big Book that I've read—this book works."

Roger Forseth, editor, Dionysos: The Literature and Addiction Triquarterly

David S. Reynolds is distinguished professor of English and American Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York. His latest book, Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography, won the Bancroft Prize.

Debra J. Rosenthal teaches English at Kent State University and at Case Western Reserve University.

American Studies / Literary Criticism
320 pp.
LC 96-53230
$55.00s cloth, ISBN 1-55849-081-7
$24.95s paper, ISBN 1-55849-082-5
1997
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