Brief description
The module will consider the historical context to New England Puritanism, beginning with the 'Elizabethan Settlement'. It will then examine the motives for migration to early New England and the first attempts to inculcate into children the glories of their immediate past. The module will then present the first evidences of more formal historical writing, by the early leaders of New England society, who wrote history as they 'made' it, serving (as it were) as God's stenographers. A useful variation on this theme is to examine the extensive diary-keeping of the period. We will examine how the writers attempted to come to terms with Indians and witchcraft as part of their story. One of the most poignant aspects of the former is the captivity narrative. By the end of the seventeenth century a small group of men, led by Cotton Mather, began to review the New England experience within the context of a perceived 'declension' of Puritan zeal and practice.

Throughout the entire period, one of the main themes of these historiographers was New England's parallels with the Chosen People of the Old Testament; this 'typography' provides a most useful andle by which to open the door to the New England 'mind'.