Download or read book American Madonna written by John Gatta and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author John Gatta delineates a countercultural pattern of mythic assertion that has yet to be acknowledged in standard surveys of American cultural or literary history. Gatta argues that flirtation with the Marian cultus offered Protestant writers symbolic compensation for what might be culturally diagnosed as a deficiency of psychic femininity, or anima, in America.