Digital Commons Network^™

"The Barber's Ghost," January 7, 1825, Unknown Author

Alfred L. Shoemaker Folk Cultural Documents

Typed copy of a folk tale appearing in the Chronicle of the Times of Reading, dated January 7, 1825. The unknown author tells the story of a man pretending to be a ghost in order to trick the gambling patrons at an inn and take their money.

Anecdote From The Chronicle Of The Times, July 30, 1823, Unknown Author

Alfred L. Shoemaker Folk Cultural Documents

A typed copy of a humorous anecdote taken from the Reading, Pennsylvania Chronicle of the Times, dated July 30, 1823. The tale concerns the occupation of grave diggers in the afterlife.

Particulars Of The Capture Of The Spanish Ship Tryal, At The Island Of St. Maria; With The Documents Relating To That Affair., Amasa Delano, Paul Royster, Ed.

Electronic Texts in American Studies

Herman Melville used the incident narrated in Amasa Delano’s 1817 memoir A Narrative of Voyages and Travels as the basis for the story “Benito Cereno,” published in 3 installments in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine (October-December 1855). Melville’s story changed some names and details, and added rich descriptions and moral reflections, while dramatizing Captain Delano’s experience of offering aid to a ship in distress before discovering the situation was not what was first apprehended. Melville had similarly fictionalized a “found” document in writing the novel Israel Potter earlier that same year, but “Benito Cereno” gives a much darker picture of human relations, …

Copy Of Advertisements In The Marietta Pilot Newspaper, January 5, 1816, Marietta Pilot Newspaper

Alfred L. Shoemaker Folk Cultural Documents

A typed set of advertisements found in The Marietta Pilot newspaper, dated January 5, 1816. Within, a wife named Catherine responds to a previous advertisement placed by her husband, John Galbaugh, which discredited her character. Catherine refutes her husband, claiming that he is the cause of any financial hardship they must endure.

The Threefold Paradise Of Cotton Mather: An Edition Of "Triparadisus", Reiner Smolinski

Electronic Texts in American Studies

No other American Puritan has fueled both the popular and academic imagination as has Cotton Mather (1663-1728). Colonial America's foremost theologian and historian, Mather was also one of its most powerful voices advocating millennialism. His lifelong preoccupation with this subject culminated in his definitive treatise, "Triparadisus" (1726/1727), left unpublished at his death. In it, Mather justified his ideological revisionism; his response to the philological, historical, and scientific challenges of the Bible as text by English and continental deists; and his hermeneutical break from the orthodox exegeses of his father, Increase Mather, and Joseph Mede. In his critical introduction to this …

Leaf From A 1663 Eliot Indian Bible: Jeremiah Xl, Xlii-Xliii

Rare Books

This is the first Bible printed in what is now the United States and is in a Native American language. John Eliot, a Cambridge scholar, Christian missionary, translator and linguist, learned the Wôpanâak dialect of the tribes of colonial New England with the assistance of several native speakers. His New Testament translation was printed in 1661. Two years later, he completed the Old Testament in Wôpanâak. His translations documented a language that didn’t exist in written form before his translation.

Title supplied by cataloger.

A Brief And True Report Of The New Found Land Of Virginia, Thomas Hariot

Zea E-Books in American Studies

This is an ebook edition of the first book published by an English colonist in America. Its author, Thomas Hariot or Harriot, was a cartographer, mathematician, astronomer, linguist, and philosopher, who was a participant in Sir Walter Ralegh’s first attempt to establish a colony in “Virginia,” on Roanoke Island in modern-day North Carolina, from June 1585 until June 1586. Hariot had learned the rudiments of the Algonkian language from two natives brought back to England from an earlier exploratory voyage, and he served as interpreter and liaison with the native peoples of the surrounding region. His Brief and True Report …

A Brief And True Report Of The New Found Land Of Virginia (1588), Thomas Hariot, Paul Royster , Editor

Electronic Texts in American Studies

This is an online electronic text edition of the first book published by an English colonist in America. Its author, Thomas Hariot or Harriot, was a cartographer, mathematician, astronomer, linguist, and philosopher, who was a participant in Sir Walter Ralegh’s first attempt to establish a colony in “Virginia,” on Roanoke Island in modern-day North Carolina, from June 1585 until June 1586. Hariot had learned the rudiments of the Algonkian language from two natives brought back to England from an earlier exploratory voyage, and he served as interpreter and liaison with the native peoples of the surrounding region. His Brief and …

(2000) Discovering Our Voice: A Manual To Accompany 'Geraldo', Ann Margaret Sharp, Laurance J. Splitter

Collected Papers of Laurance J. Splitter

Geraldo is a story about what an immigrant undergoes when he leaves one culture and tries to 'join' another culture. An immigrant suffers a triple disruption: he loses his sense of place, he enters into an alien language, and he finds himself surrounded by beings whose social behavior, norms and traditions are very unlike, and sometimes even offensive to his own. The explanation of the leading ideas in this manual help students and teachers explore the philosophical themes in Geraldo. The discussion plans, exercises, and activities are designed to foster and cultivate the process of philosophical dialogue in the classroom. …