From Physical to Spiritual Errand: The Immigrant Experience in John Winthrop, William Bradford, and Samuel Danforth

• Authors: Justyna Fruzińska
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper analyzes early colonial representations of the New World, connected with immigration of the first- and second-generation religious dissenters in what was to become America. Taking into account the well-documented influence of Puritans on American identity (often noticed by scholars since Tocqueville), the paper elaborates on the Puritans’ and Pilgrims’ mindsets as they arrived in the New World, connected not only with their religious beliefs but most of all with a practical need to organize themselves effectively. Be it in John Winthrop’s “A Modell of Christian Charity,” William Bradford’s “Of Plymouth Plantation” or Samuel Danforth’s “New England’s Errand into the Wilderness,” the authors of these works clearly show how the Pilgrims and Puritans had to confront the experience of emigration/immigration and construct not only new ways of social organization but also new identity. The paper focuses on the immigrants’ perception of the New World, their own role and challenges they were faced with, and their thinking about the society they came from and were about to construct. It deals with their process of adjusting to the surroundings and discussing values they decided to promote for the sake of communal survival in the adverse conditions of the New World.

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 5
• Pages: 149-159

Dates

published

2015-11-01

online

2015-11-17

Contributors

author

Justyna Fruzińska

• University of Łódź

References

• Bercovitch, Sacvan. “New England’s Errand Reappraised.” New Directions in American Intellectual History. Ed. John Higham and Paul Conkin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979. 85-104. Print.
• Bradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation 1620-1647. Ed. Samuel Eliot Morison. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1952. Print.
• Bremer, Francis J. The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards. Hanover: UP of New England, 1995. Print.
• Calverton, V. F. The Liberation of American Literature. New York: Scribner’s, 1932. Print.
• Hall, David D. Puritans in the New World: A Critical Anthology. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. Print.
• Huntington, Samuel P. Who Are We? The Challenges to American National Identity. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004. Print.
• Kessler, Sanford. “Tocqueville’s Puritans: Christianity and the American Founding.” The Journal of Politics 54.3 (1992): 776-92. Print.[Crossref]
• Michaelsen, Scott. “John Winthrop’s ‘Modell’ Covenant and the Company Way.” Early American Literature 27.2 (1992): 85-100. Print.
• Miller, Perry. “Errand into the Wilderness.” The William and Mary Quarterly 10.1 (1953): 4-32. Print.
• Smith, Rogers M. “From the Shining City on a Hill to a Great Metropolis on a Plain? American Stories of Immigration and Peoplehood.” Social Research 77.1 (2010): 21-44. Print.
• Winthrop, John. “A Modell of Christian Charity.” 1630. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston, 1838. 3rd series. 7:31-48. Hannover Historical Texts Project. Hannover College. August 1996. Web. 5 Jan. 2015.
• Zafirovski, Milan. “The Most Cherished Myth: Puritanism and Liberty Reconsidered and Revised.” The American Sociologist 38.1 (2007): 23-59. Print.[Crossref]

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/texmat-2015-0011