This book contains thirteen original essays about Puritan culture in colonial New England. Prompted by the growing interest in secular studies, as well as postnational, transnational, and postcolonial critique in the humanities, American Literature and the New Puritan Studies seeks to represent and advance contemporary interest in a field long recognized, however problematically, as foundational to the study of American literature. It invites readers of American literature and culture to reconsider the role of seventeenth-century Puritanism in the creation of the United States of America and its consequent cultural and literary histories. It also records the significant transformation in the field of Puritan studies that has taken place in the last quarter century. In addition to re-reading well known texts of seventeenth-century Puritan New England, the volume contains essays focused on unknown or lesser studied events and texts, as well as new scholarship on post-Puritan archives, monuments, and historiography.

'This book is valuable to any student or scholar of early American, Puritan, and/or American studies wanting a good overview of the changes to these fields in the last quarter-century. And I recommend it as an example of exciting scholarship that demonstrates new habits of research and reading.'

Andrea Knutson Source: American Literary History

'American Literature and the New Puritan Studies map[s] some of the exciting, potential routes forward for those interested in studying Puritans and their influences in American history, letters, and thought.'

Richard A. Bailey Source: Early American Literature