The Puritan Experience

Originally published in 1972 and based on extensive research and use of source materials including manuscripts, this book examines Puritan spiritual autobiographies written before 1725 and sets them in the context of the literary tradition out of which they grew. As well as Bunyan, Baxter and Fox, this book also discusses important works which have received less attention, notably the Confessions of Richard Norwood, the Bermudan settler. The book identifies 3 strands in the tradition: the work of the ‘orthodox’ Puritans; the prophets of the Commonwealth, and the confessions and journals of the early Quakers. The social, religious and literary factors which contributed to their development are discussed and it is shown how the self-analysis popularized by the Puritan preachers and writers contributed to the development of the novel. The book will be of particular value to those interested in 17th Century literature or religion.

In the mid-seventeenth century, persons on both sides of the Atlantic wishing to join a Puritan church had to appear before all of its members and tell the story of their religious conversion - in effect, to give convincing verbal evidence that their souls were saved. This book explores the testimonies of spiritual experience delivered by puritans in the mid-seventeenth century in order to qualify for membership of their local churches.

Sinful Self, Saintly Self is a comprehensive study of early New England verse in light of Puritan notions regarding the nature and uses of poetry. Through a new historical reading of three major Puritan poets - Michael Wigglesworth, Anne Bradstreet, and Edward Taylor - Jeffrey Hammond reconstructs this aesthetic framework using Puritan theology, artistic and exegetical traditions deriving from the Bible, and Puritan assumptions about the psychology of the saved soul. Despite the current resurgence of interest in early American literature, Puritan poetry remains only dimly understood and appreciated. With the exception of Edward Taylor's Preparatory Meditations and Anne Bradstreet's personal lyrics, it is often viewed as a poetry of gloom and doctrine rather than of affirmation and inspiration. In reconstructing the Puritan experience of poetry, Hammond argues that this widespread view reflects a persistent tendency to approach these poems from a modern perspective

Examines the sexual attitudes of 17th- and 18th-century England. This work discusses how they have affected beliefs on a variety of issues. Drawing upon the insights of psychoanalysis, it shows that the Puritans called for a lifelong integration of sensuality, purity and constancy within marriage.

More than an ecclesiastical or political history, this book is a vivid description of the earliest American immigrant experience. It depicts the dramatic tale of the seventeenth-century newcomers to our shores as they were drawn and pushed to make their way in an unsettled and unsettling world.

In this absorbing book, George McKenna ranges across the entire panorama of American history to track the development of American patriotism. That patriotism—shaped by Reformation Protestantism and imbued with the American Puritan belief in a providential “errand”—has evolved over 350 years and influenced American political culture in both positive and negative ways, McKenna shows. The germ of the patriotism, an activist theology that stressed collective rather than individual salvation, began in the late 1630s in New England and traveled across the continent, eventually becoming a national phenomenon. Today, American patriotism still reflects its origins in the seventeenth century. By encouraging cohesion in a nation of diverse peoples and inspiring social reform, American patriotism has sometimes been a force for good. But the book also uncovers a darker side of the nation’s patriotism—a prejudice against the South in the nineteenth century, for example, and a tendency toward nativism and anti-Catholicism. Ironically, a great reversal has occurred, and today the most fervent believers in the Puritan narrative are the former “outsiders”—Catholics and Southerners. McKenna offers an interesting new perspective on patriotism’s role throughout American history, and he concludes with trenchant thoughts on its role in the post-9/11 era.

Geoffrey F. Nuttall establishes the primacy of the doctrines of the Holy Spirit in seventeenth-century English Puritanism and demonstrates the continuity of the Reformation tradition from the more conservative views of Luther to the more radical interpretations of the Quakers. Nuttall illuminates prominent spokesmen, including Richard Sibbes, Richard Baxter, John Owen, Walter Cradock, Morgan Llwyd, and George Fox. In a new Introduction, Peter Lake discusses the relevance of Nuttall's book to, and its influence on, major works in seventeenth-century English history written since 1946.