Publisher's Synopsis
New England Puritanism has had a pervasive influence on American life and culture. Instead of examining Puritan heritage in subsequent history, however, the essays collected in this volume confine their attention to the colonial period, primarily the seventeenth century. They deal with sermons, tracts, autobiographical writings, and poetry, as well as with subjects such as anti-Puritan literature, the Salem witchcraft persecutions, and Puritan theology and ideology. Writers analyzed in some detail include Cotton Mather, Thomas Lechford, Samuel Gorton, Thomas Hooker, Edward Johnson, Philip Pain, Michael Wigglesworth, Edward Taylor, Anne Bradstreet, Jonathan Edwards, Sarah Kemble Knight, and John Winthrop.
