Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Unmoored: The Search for Sincerity in Colonial America

Unmoored: The Search for Sincerity in Colonial America

Schwartz, Ana

Hardcover

Series: Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American Histo

Literary CriticismColonial Period (1600-1775)General Racism & Ethnic Studies

ISBN10: 1469671778
ISBN13: 9781469671772
Publisher: Omohundro Institute and Unc Press
Published: Jan 10 2023
Pages: 296
Weight: 1.25
Height: 1.18 Width: 6.30 Depth: 9.29
Language: English
New England's Puritans were devoted to self-scrutiny. Consumed by the pursuit of pure hearts, they latched on to sincerity as both an ideal and a social process. It fueled examinations of inner lives, governed behavior, and provided a standard against which both could be judged. In a remote, politically volatile frontier, settlers gambled that sincerity would reinforce social cohesion and shore up communal happiness. Sincere feelings and the discursive practices that manifested them promised a safe haven in a world of grinding uncertainty.

But as Ana Schwartz demonstrates, if sincerity promised much, it often delivered more: it bred shame and resentment among the English settlers and, all too often, extraordinary violence toward their Algonquian neighbors and the captured Africans who lived among them. Populating her city on a hill with the stock characters of Puritan studies as well as obscure actors, Schwartz breathes new life into our understanding of colonial New England.

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