American Literature and the New Puritan Studies

This book reconsiders the role of seventeenth-century Puritanism in the creation of the United States and its consequent cultural and literary histories.

Bryce Traister (Edited by)

9781107101883, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 September 2017

254 pages
23.7 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.5 kg

'American Literature and the New Puritan Studies map[s] some of the exciting, potential routes forward for those interested in studying Puritans and their influences in American history, letters, and thought.' Richard A. Bailey, Early American Literature

This book contains thirteen original essays about Puritan culture in colonial New England. Prompted by the growing interest in secular studies, as well as postnational, transnational, and postcolonial critique in the humanities, American Literature and the New Puritan Studies seeks to represent and advance contemporary interest in a field long recognized, however problematically, as foundational to the study of American literature. It invites readers of American literature and culture to reconsider the role of seventeenth-century Puritanism in the creation of the United States of America and its consequent cultural and literary histories. It also records the significant transformation in the field of Puritan studies that has taken place in the last quarter century. In addition to re-reading well known texts of seventeenth-century Puritan New England, the volume contains essays focused on unknown or lesser studied events and texts, as well as new scholarship on post-Puritan archives, monuments, and historiography.

1. Introduction: the new Puritan studies Bryce Traister
Part I. Unexpected Puritans: 2. Sovereignty and grace: Hobbes and the Puritans Paul Downes
3. Sabbatai Sevi and the Ottoman Jews in Increase Mather's The Mystery of Israel's Salvation Nan Goodman
4. Benjamin Colman, laughter, and Church membership in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Massachusetts Michael Schuldiner
5. A pre-millennial portrait during the revocation of the Massachusetts Charter Linda M. Johnson
Part II. Puritanism's Others: 6. Imperial translations: new world missionary linguistics, indigenous interpreters, and universal languages in the early modern era Allison Margaret Bigelow
7. Native poetics in Edward Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence of Sions Saviour in New England Betty Booth Donohue
8. Pregnancy and anxiety: medicine, religion, and the occult in Cotton Mather's The Angel of Bethesda Brice Peterson
9. Monuments of grace and spectacles of terror: Cotton Mather and the case of William Fly Jason M. Payton
Part III. Puritan Afterlives: 10. Puritan acts and monuments Jonathan Beecher Field
11. Toward digital Puritan studies: iconoclasm, child mortality, and patterns of mourning in the Farber Gravestone Collection Harry Brown
12. What do we know about the New England Puritans, and when did we know it? Twenty-first century reconsiderations of William Bradford and John Winthrop Michael Ditmore
13. Claiming the high ground: Catholics, Protestants, and the City on a Hill Abram C. Van Engen
14. Afterword: '… and American literature' Bryce Traister
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Religious groups: social & cultural aspects [JFSR], Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literary essays [DNF]