American Puritan Writing

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

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When the American Puritan colonies were founded in the mid-seventeenth century, American Puritanism was a minor offshoot of English Protestantism. It grew in cultural importance retrospectively, however, as New England prospered and played a major role in the formation of the United States. American Puritan writing thence became one of the founding literatures of the new nation. The Puritan colonies had been the most literate, organised and economically successful of all the early English-speaking colonies, and their legacy was emphasized by the influential nineteenth-century New England writers, including Emerson, Hawthorne and Longfellow. But as revisionist scholars remind us, the Puritans were only one culture among many which inhabited in colonial times the territory of the futureā€¦

3983 words

Citation: Morris, Amy M.E.. "American Puritan Writing". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 November 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1684, accessed 19 March 2024.]

1684 American Puritan Writing 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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