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The Cultural Dynamics of
The Cultural Dynamics of
The Cultural Dynamics of
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Literary History
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The Cultural Dynamics of
American Puritanism
David M. Robinson
The Long Argument: It can no longer be said that all studies of American Pu-
English Puritanism and ritanism are a series of footnotes to Perry Miller. An extraor-
the Shaping of New
dinary outpouring of work in the past decade has established
England Culture,
1570-1700 Puritan studies, always among the most demanding of fields,
By Stephen Foster as one of the liveliest as well. Miller's success as an interpreter
University of North of Puritan culture arose from his ability to command a diverse
Carolina Press, 1991 audience of literary scholars, intellectual historians, and theo-
logians; the current renaissance of Puritan studies has the same
Female Piety in
Puritan New England:
interdisciplinary quality. David D. Hall has cataloged the trib-
The Emergence of utary discourses in recent Puritan scholarship, noting that his-
Religious Humanism torians, literary critics, and seminary historians have all con-
By Amanda Porterfield tributed not to a consensus but a reframing of important
Oxford University questions about Puritan history.' Moreover, Puritanism has
Press, 1992
been displaced from the central role once accorded it as the
foundational movement of American culture and increasingly
understood as one of many elements of a quite diverse colonial
society, one best understood, in many respects, as a colonial
society rather than an incipient nation-state (see Gura,
"Study" 307-10, 337-41). But this displacement of Puritan-
ism has not resulted in its neglect, nor has it in any way di-
minished the fascinating complexity of its internal politics,
social ethics, or theology. New work, it seems, always stim-
ulates newer work. Stephen Foster's The Long Argument and
Amanda Porterfield's Female Piety in Puritan New England,
both under review here, offer important investigations of the
role of Puritanism in American cultural studies, examining in
different ways the social and political issues always near the
surface when "Puritanism" and "America" are brought into
conjunction. Foster's book offers us a remarkably original and
comprehensive narrative of New England Puritanism's rise and
fall, emphasizing the seamless connection between English
politics and the fate of the New England Puritan movement;
Porterfield's study raises important questions about the role of
gender in the work of theological and artistic expression in
Puritan culture.
Puritanism was in its essence a religious movement, and
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American Literary History 739
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740 The Cultural Dynamics of American Puritanism
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American Literary History 741
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742 The Cultural Dynamics of American Puritanism
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American Literary History 743
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744 The Cultural Dynamics of American Puritanism
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American Literary History 745
come the New England identity" (237). He led the New En-
gland response to the threat posed by the appointment of royal
governors for the colony, locating in the churches and the
clergy a base of resistance through cultural cohesion. "As di-
rect rule from England became more likely [in the mid-1680s],
leading ministers in the Bay began to take precautions against
the awful time when the churches might not be permitted to
continue openly" (240). Sermons and theological writing took
on the identity of "survival manuals" in a "projected guerilla
warfare" (240-41). Mather thus engineered a situation in
which a perceived threat to the New England churches was
taken as a threat to New England's cultural identity. His influ-
ence was at its zenith in this period of crisis, a prelude to his,
and New England Puritanism's, gradual decline in influence
after the Salem witch trials. Foster reminds us that it was
Mather who actually halted the trials with his Cases of Con-
science Concerning Evil Spirits (1692), a treatise that attacked
the viability of spectral evidence, which had become the key
theological and legal issue in the trials. But the four-month
delay between Mather's return from England in May and his
circulation of the work in October was crucial. "[B]etween 2
June 1692 and 22 September, 19 people were tried, convicted,
and hanged, and on 19 September one man was pressed to
death for refusing to plead. If Increase Mather had the power
to stop these murders," Foster asks, "why did he take so long
to use it?" (255). He suggests that the answer can be found
in Mather's political ties to lieutenant governor William
Stoughton, the most influential judge at the trials. "In this
volatile situation the Mathers had too much of what they had
gained for New England tied up in the reputation of Stoughton
and his associates. They could not afford an open breach with
these new allies and so moved by degrees only, while the rest
of the ministry followed their lead" (260). The result was an
expedient gradualness that in the long run did irreparable po-
litical damage both to the leadership of New England's clergy
and to the church. The witch trials thus accelerated the trend
that Mather had resisted, the process of secularization by
which New Englanders gradually ceased to think of them-
selves as "people of God" and came to recognize their iden-
tity as "colonists" (270).
The most decisive blow to Puritanism would come some
50 years later in the guise of an attempt to revive it, the Great
Awakening. Because of his intellectually rigorous rehabilita-
tion of Calvinism, we have customarily accorded Jonathan Ed-
wards the key role in the Great Awakening, conceiving his
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746 The Cultural Dynamics of American Puritanism
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American Literary History 747
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748 The Cultural Dynamics of American Puritanism
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American Literary History 749
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750 The Cultural Dynamics of American Puritanism
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American Literary History 751
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752 The Cultural Dynamics of American Puritanism
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American Literary History 753
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754 The Cultural Dynamics of American Puritanism
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American Literary History 755
Notes
1. The number and quality of studies of Puritan culture since the late
1970s is quite remarkable. For another overview of aspects of new work
in Puritan studies, see Wood. For broader overviews of the field of early
American Literature, see Gura, "Study"; and De Prospo.
3. See Baym 14-50 for an explanation of how the sentimental mode could
serve as a means of women's empowerment.
Works Cited
De Prospo, R. C. "Marginalizing
Early American Literature." New Hatch, Nathan O. The Democrati-
Literary History 23 (1992): 234-65. zation of American Christianity.
New Haven: Yale UP, 1989.
Douglas, Ann. The Feminization of
American Culture. New York: Miller, Perry. Errand into the Wil-
Knopf, 1977. derness. Cambridge: Belknap-Har-
vard UP, 1956.
Gura, Philip F A Glimpse of Sion's
Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New Robinson, David M. "The Road Not
England, 1620-1660. Middletown: Taken: From Edwards, through
Wesleyan UP, 1984. Chauncy, to Emerson." Arizona
Quarterly 48 (1992): 45-61.
. "The Study of Colonial
American Literature, 1966-1987: A Wood, Gordon S. "Struggle over the
Vade Mecum." William and Mary Puritans." New York Review of
Quarterly 3rd ser. 45 (1988): 305-41. Books 9 Nov. 1989: 26-32.
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