The Puritan and the Cynic: Moralists and Theorists in French and American LettersWhy do Americans, and so often, American writers, profess moral sentiments and yet write so little in the traditionally moralistic genres of maxim and fable? What is the relation between moral concerns and literary theory? Can any sort of morality survive the supposed nihilism of deconstruction? Jefferson Humphries undertakes a discussion of questions like these through a comparative reading of the ways in which moral issues surface in French and