Author Description

Revising Dominant Accounts Of Puritanism And Challenging The Literary History Of Sentimentalism, Sympathetic Puritans Argues That A Calvinist Theology Of Sympathy Shaped The Politics, Religion, Rhetoric, And Literature Of Early New England. Scholars Have Often Understood And Presented Sentimentalism As A Direct Challenge To Stern And Stoic Puritan Forebears; The Standard History Traces A Cult Of Sensibility Back To Moral Sense Philosophy And The Scottish Enlightenment, Not Puritan New England. Abram C. Van Engen Has Unearthed Pervasive Evidence Of Sympathy In A Large Archive Of Puritan Sermons, Treatises, Tracts, Poems, Journals, Histories, And Captivity Narratives. He Demonstrates How Two Types Of Sympathy -- The Active Command To Fellow-feel (a Duty), As Well As The Passive Sign That Could Indicate Salvation (a Discovery) -- Permeated Puritan Society And Came To Define The Very Boundaries Of English Culture, Affecting Conceptions Of Community, Relations With Native Americans, And The Development Of American Literature. Van Engen Re-examines The Antinomian Controversy, Conversion Narratives, Transatlantic Relations, Puritan Missions, Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative -- And Puritan Culture More Generally -- Through The Lens Of Sympathy. Demonstrating And Explicating A Calvinist Theology Of Sympathy In Seventeenth-century New England, The Book Reveals The Religious History Of A Concept That Has Previously Been Associated With More Secular Roots.