These three monographs represent the fruitfulness with which early Americanist scholars have explored the intersections of religious and theological concerns with literary, political, and scientific realms. Abram C. Van Engen’s consideration of Calvinist sympathy and fellow feeling reshapes our understanding of Puritan emotional discourse and of canonical early American texts. Zachary McLeod Hutchins’s exploration of early American fascination with Eden illuminates the literary and political landscape of early America. Kelly Wisecup’s analysis of colonial medical discourse shows the fluid boundaries between religion and science in colonial America and reveals the consequences of that fluidity for relations among Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans. The monographs share as well lively transatlantic engagements, attending to the circulations of people and texts in the Atlantic (and, in Wisecup’s case, the Pacific).
In Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow Feeling in Early New England, Van Engen initially sets up his sympathetic Puritans in contrast to the...
