An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences
An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences

Author: Increase Mather

Publisher: Academic Resources Corp

Published: 1977

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13:

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Providential explanations for "notable happenings" in Puritan history, such as cases of Indian captivity, shipwreck, natural disaster, & diabolic manifestations, possessions, & witchcraft. Essential to an understanding of Puritan society & culture in colonial America. The Essay is also one of America's earliest scientific works. Mather, shortly to become President of Harvard College, discusses magnetism, earthquakes, & medicine, with specific examples drawn from the New England experience, as in other accounts of the period, but differing from them in his "more scientific method, & in the devotion of some space to the exploding of superstition & the treatment of purely scientific subjects" (DAB). The book is still eminently & entirely readable, its vigorous & colloquial prose constantly equal to its extraordinary content.

The Salem Witch Trials Reader
The Salem Witch Trials Reader

Author: Frances Hill

Publisher: Da Capo Press

Published: 2009-06-16

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 0786748389

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Against the backdrop of a Puritan theocracy threatened by change, in a population terrified not only of eternal damnation but of the earthly dangers of Indian massacres and recurrent smallpox epidemics, a small group of girls denounces a black slave and others as worshipers of Satan. Within two years, twenty men and women are hanged or pressed to death and over a hundred others imprisoned and impoverished. In The Salem Witch Trials Reader, Frances Hill provides and astutely comments upon the actual documents from the trial--examinations of suspected witches, eyewitness accounts of "Satanic influence," as well as the testimony of those who retained their reason and defied the madness. Always drawing on firsthand documents, she illustrates the historical background to the witchhunt and shows how the trials have been represented, and sometimes distorted, by historians--and how they have fired the imaginations of poets, playwrights, and novelists. For those fascinated by the Salem witch trials, this is compelling reading and the sourcebook.

The Devil's Dominion
The Devil's Dominion

Author: Richard Godbeer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780521466707

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The Devil's Dominion examines the use of folk magic by ordinary men and women in early New England. The book describes in vivid detail the magical techniques used by settlers and the assumptions which underlaid them. Godbeer argues that layfolk were generally far less consistent in their beliefs and actions than their ministers would have liked; even church members sometimes turned to magic. The Devil's Dominion reveals that the relationship between magical and religious belief was complex and ambivalent: some members of the community rejected magic altogether, but others did not. Godbeer argues that the controversy surrounding astrological prediction in early New England paralleled clerical condemnation of magical practice, and that the different perspectives on witchcraft engendered by magical tradition and Puritan doctrine often caused confusion and disagreement when New Englanders sought legal punishment of witches.

The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literatures
The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literatures

Author: Ralph Bauer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-08-14

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780521822022

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Ralph Bauer presents a comparative investigation of colonial prose narratives in Spanish and British America from 1542 to 1800. He discusses narratives of shipwreck, captivity, and travel, as well as imperial and natural histories of the New World in the context of transformative early modern scientific ideologies. Bauer positions the narrative models promoted by the 'New Sciences' during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries within the context of the geopolitical question of how knowledge can be centrally controlled in outwardly expanding empires.

Communities of Journalism
Communities of Journalism

Author: David Paul Nord

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780252026713

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Widely acknowledged as one of our most insightful commentators on the history of journalism in the United State, David Paul Nord offers a lively and wide-ranging discussion of journalism as a vital component of community. In settings ranging from the religion-infused towns of colonial America to the rrapidly expanding urban metropolises of the late nineteenth century, Nord explores the cultural work of the press.