Resisting Puritans

This essay lays out five stages in the development of Puritan studies over the past three decades: Freestanding Puritanism, Diverse Puritanisms, Transatlantic Puritanism, Settler-Colonial Puritanism, and Persistent Puritanism. These categories map onto similar movements in early American studies more broadly. Having surveyed these developments, the essay spells out a few ways forward, looking specifically at Anne Bradstreet for inspiration (one of the oldest subjects in Puritan literary studies). Finally, the essay turns to the dominant paradigm of oppression and resistance, which guides early American studies more generally and Puritan studies in particular. The essay argues that this paradigm, while important and useful, could be nuanced and made even more useful if it took into consideration how the Puritans themselves understood and applied such categories - resisting and oppressing often in one and the same act. The Puritans set up constitutional constraints to limit and oppose authoritarianism, for example in their actions with the 1629 Charter of Massachusetts Bay. Yet in resisting authoritarianism, they also opened floodgates to white settler colonialism. The essay argues for understanding both aspects together and thinking through the legacies of each.