A History of American Puritan Literature

For generations, scholars have imagined American puritans as religious enthusiasts, fleeing persecution, finding refuge in Massachusetts, and founding 'America'. The puritans have been read as a product of New England and the origin of American exceptionalism. This History challenges the usual understanding of American puritans, offering new ways of reading their history and their literary culture. Together, an international team of authors make clear that puritan America cannot be thought of apart from Native America, and that its literature is also grounded in Britain, Europe, North America, the Caribbean, and networks that spanned the globe. Each chapter focuses on a single place, method, idea, or context to read familiar texts anew and to introduce forgotten or neglected voices and writings. A History of American Puritan Literature is a collaborative effort to create not a singular literary history, but a series of interlocked new histories of American puritan literature.

Introduction Kristina Bross and Abram Van Engen; Prologue. Pilgrims, puritans, and the origin of America Abram Van Engen; Part I. Places: 1. Native America Drew Lopenzina; 2. British Isles David D. Hall; 3. Europe Jan Stievermann; 4. Colonial North America Evan Haefeli; 5. Caribbean Kristina Bross; 6. Global America Michelle Burnham; Part II. Approaches: 7. Theology Lisa M. Gordis; 8. Aesthetics Joanne van der Woude; 9. Gender Tamara Harvey; 10. Race Cassander L. Smith; 11. Print culture Jonathan Beecher Field; 12. Ritual Matthew P. Brown; 13. Manuscript culture Meredith Marie Neuman; 14. Environment Timothy Sweet; 15. Science Ralph Bauer; 16. Millennialism Christopher Trigg; 17. Postsecularism Bryce Traister; Afterword. The puritan imaginary and the puritans' world Abram Van Engen.

Kristina Bross is Professor of English at Purdue University. A past president of the Society of Early Americanists (SEA), Kristina Bross has published articles in numerous scholarly journals and book collections on early American literature, archival studies, and pedagogy. She is the author of Dry Bones and Indian Sermons: Praying Indians and Colonial America (2004) and Co-editor of Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical Anthology (2008; Hilary Wyss, co-editor). Her book Future History: Global Fantasies in American and British Writings (2017) was named as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title in 2018.
Abram Van Engen is Associate Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. His articles have been published in multiple scholarly journals, as well as Avidly, Comment Magazine, Common-place, The Conversation, Humanities Magazine, Religion and Politics, Salon.com, and other venues. In 2012, he won the Walter Muir Whitehill Prize in Early American History. He is the author of Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow-Feeling in Early New England (2015) and City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism (2020). His research and writing have won a Benjamin F. Stevens Fellowship from the Massachusetts Historical Society, as well as a Faculty Fellowship and a Public Scholars Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities.