Book contents
- A History of American Puritan Literature
- A History of American Puritan Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Prologue
- Part I Places
- Part II Approaches
- Chapter 7 Theology
- Chapter 8 Aesthetics
- Chapter 9 Gender
- Chapter 10 Race
- Chapter 11 Print Culture
- Chapter 12 Ritual
- Chapter 13 Manuscript Culture
- Chapter 14 Environment
- Chapter 15 Science
- Chapter 16 Millennialism
- Chapter 17 Postsecularism
- Afterword
- Appendix
- Index
Chapter 10 - Race
from Part II - Approaches
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2020
- A History of American Puritan Literature
- A History of American Puritan Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Prologue
- Part I Places
- Part II Approaches
- Chapter 7 Theology
- Chapter 8 Aesthetics
- Chapter 9 Gender
- Chapter 10 Race
- Chapter 11 Print Culture
- Chapter 12 Ritual
- Chapter 13 Manuscript Culture
- Chapter 14 Environment
- Chapter 15 Science
- Chapter 16 Millennialism
- Chapter 17 Postsecularism
- Afterword
- Appendix
- Index
Summary
This chapter explores race as a prevalent theme in American puritan literature. How did puritans understand human difference in early America and how did those understandings affect the literature they produced about their interactions with black Africans and Natives? That is to say, what did puritans mean when they employed race in early America? And how might their encounters with black Africans and Natives have impeded their efforts to represent race? Despite the fact that race as an idea and social structure was not stable through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, puritans endeavored to differentiate themselves from those black Africans and Natives with whom they interacted in early America. To establish difference, they modified racialized ideas that were already circulating through Europe. This chapter highlights several of those ideas as they appear in American puritan literature. It ends with a discussion about the ways in which the material world encounters between puritans and those they deemed inferior because of their race challenged their racial notions and shaped the literature.
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- A History of American Puritan Literature , pp. 211 - 224Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020