'Puritan Legacies', in John Coffey and Paul Lim, eds, The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (CUP, 2008). (original) (raw)
Related papers
Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, 2022
Puritanism has, rightly, been seen as a primarily English phenomenon. But puritan ideas can also be studied in very different contexts, as they spread throughout the English-speaking religious world. This article seeks to “decenter” puritanism by examining it from the perspective of the other two national churches in Britain and Ireland – those in Scotland and Ireland. Taking Patrick Collinson’s definition of puritanism—that it was not something definable in itself, but rather it was one half of a stressful relationship – it is shown that in both Ireland and Scotland, puritanism only came into existence when it was attacked by the English monarch and by those who saw puritanism in terms of its English manifestation. Until well into the seventeenth century, puritanism in both Ireland and Scotland was just a largely unnoticed part of a broadly reformed church. Only with the extension of royal power in the course of the first half of the seventeenth century, and the subsequent determination of King Charles I and Archbishop William Laud to bring the three Churches into closer conformity, did puritanism become a major issue in Ireland and Scotland.
Literature is the voice of a culture and each literary period reflects a historical, and cultural world view unique to that time frame; therefore, the works characteristic of each period may be examined to determine the milieu of the culture. It is particularly important to distinguish the literary voice of the American Puritan and how that voice defined the pervading thought of the forming American Republic. It may also be acknowledged that subsequent literary periods contain either a rejection or reconstruction of American Puritan thought, to such an extent that upon consideration of contemporary literature, readers may encounter a worldview that completely disregards foundational ideologies of the Puritan thinkers. This paper seeks to identify what is herein termed, the Puritan mind, or the basic life view tenets of the Puritan authors and the role of the Puritan belief through historical and theological research, literary criticism, through Bradford's writings. These findings will be used as the basis of further studies regarding the declination of the Puritan mind in American literature.
The American Puritans and the historians
1986
In 1964, intellectual historian Henry May announced in a now-famous essay the beginning of "The Recovery of American Religious History." May has since recalled that his claim was greeted with scepticism (66). The subsequent record, however, has proven him more than right. In hindsight it is fair to say that May's essay heralded only the first trickle of an on-going flood of research that continues to the present. Numerous new emphases and approaches, such as those on popular religion and social history, have flourished, and virtually no theme, movement, tradition, group, or era has escaped attention: revivalism, esoterica, civil religion, indigenous peoples, women, new religions, ethnic imports, and just about every denomination twice-over.
The Puritans - Linchpin of the American Imagination. Syllabus 2016.pdf
In 1975, Sacvan Bercovitch published a book called The Puritan Origins of the American Self offering a reading of American self-‐understanding through the lens of its Puritan past. The wager of this seminar is that while always deeply ambivalent towards its Puritan beginnings, the Puritans, nonetheless, serve as a linchpin of the American imagination. They are used as a trope for subsequent self-‐evaluations and negotiations of political and social tensions, especially also unresolved issues of the fledgling democracy such as gender and race. While giving students a detailed understanding of America’s puritan past, this seminar will also offer an overview of American literary history, from the 16th century writings to contemporary African-‐American voices.
Puritanism and The Enlightenment
This document expresses my thoughts and questions regarding Puritanism and its context in Enlightenment-era Europe. I will focus my thoughts via interacting with J.I. Packer's book A Quest For Godliness (Crossway, 1990).