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Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow Feeling in Early New England
Sympathetic Puritans re-examines Puritan culture through the lens and language of sympathy. Challenging the stereotype of stern and stoic Puritans, it argues that a Calvinist theology of sympathy shaped the politics, religion, rhetoric, and literature of early New England. Studying a large archive of sermons, treatises, tracts, poems, journals, histories, and captivity narratives, this book demonstrates how two types of sympathy permeated Puritan society and came to define the very boundaries of English culture, affecting ideas of persuasion and salvation, conceptions of community, relations with Native Americans, and the development of American literature.