Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Bercovitch's early books, The Puritan Origins of the American Self and The American Jeremiad (along with his edited collections on typology and The American Puritan Imagination) presented a new interpretation of the structures of expression and feeling that composed the writing of Puritan New England.
John Milton (1608–1674), most famous for his epic poem "Paradise Lost" (1667), was an English poet with religious beliefs emphasizing central Puritanical views.While the work acted as an expression of his despair over the failure of the Puritan Revolution against the English Catholic Church, it also indicated his optimism in human potential.
Anne was born in Northampton, England in 1612, the daughter of Thomas Dudley, a steward of the Earl of Lincoln, and Dorothy Yorke. [6]Due to her family's position, she grew up in cultured circumstances and was a well-educated woman for her time, being tutored in history, several languages, and literature.
"The Puritan's utter lack of aesthetic sense, his distrust of all romantic emotion, his unmatchable intolerance of opposition, his unbreakable belief in his own bleak and narrow views, his savage cruelty of attack, his lust for relentless and barbarous persecution – these things have put an almost unbearable burden up on the exchange of ideas ...
The book received a positive reception and the Intellectual Freedom Round Table of the American Library Association awarded McLeod with the Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award, which honors the "best published work in the area of intellectual freedom".
Under Charles I, the Puritans became a political force as well as a religious tendency in the country. Opponents of the royal prerogative became allies of Puritan reformers, who saw the Church of England moving in a direction opposite to what they wanted, and objected to increased Catholic influence both at Court and (as they saw it) within the Church.
In the 17th century, the word Puritan was a term applied not to just one group but to many. Historians still debate a precise definition of Puritanism. [6] Originally, Puritan was a pejorative term characterizing certain Protestant groups as extremist. Thomas Fuller, in his Church History, dates the first use of the word to 1564.
The jeremiad was a favorite literary device of the Puritans, and was used in prominent early evangelical sermons like "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by Jonathan Edwards. [6] Besides Jonathan Edwards, such jeremiads can be found in every era of American history, including John Adams , Thomas Jefferson and James Fenimore Cooper .