An interdisciplinary investigation of large ephermeral and journalistic literature, this work traces the main scenario of the nation's first legitimate novel from its roots in the conflicting mental set of the American Enlightenment to its vestiges in the Twentieth Century. Introducing the contrast between ancient and middle European uses of the legends and lore surrounding the Akedah, or Binding, and inferred meanings of that tradition in modern popular literature of the United States, it explores the peculiarly American presentiments that not only is the voice of the people not of necessity the voice of God but also that the voice of God is not always what it seems. At the center of a workingout of the culture's belief system relative to these matters is a structuralist approach to newspaper, pamphlet, and sermon accounts of scores of parricide cases concentrated in the early national period. A matrix of folktale-like components are described in an effort to link the homicides to the demands of an increasingly shrill campaign for a perceptibly national literature. Especially in the dramatic fictions of Philadelphians writing in the Federal period through the Jacksonian years, these themes are as noticeable as they are yet relevant. Research was completed under the auspices of The Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies of the University of Pennsylvania through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation.