Transgressing the Bounds: Subversive Enterprises among the Puritan Elite in Massachusetts, 1630-1692

by Louise A. Breen

Overview

This study offers a new interpretation of the Puritan "Antinomian" controversy and a skillful analysis of its wider and long term social and cultural significance. Breen argues that controversy both reflected and fostered larger questions of identity that would persist in Puritan New England during the 17th century. Some issues discussed here include the existence of individualism in a society that valued conformity and the response of members of an inward-looking, localistic culture to those among them of a more "cosmopolitan" nature. Central to Breen's study is the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, an elite social club that attracted a heterogeneous yet prominent membership, and whose diversity contrasted with the social and religious ideals of the cultural majority.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190285975
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/22/2001
Series:	Religion in America
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	980 KB

About the Author

Kansas State University

Editorial Reviews

"Breen has identified a general pattern that is a useful guidepost for reading the actions, decisions, and changing alliances of Bay Colony leadership. In bringing these individuals to our attention, she has provided an illuminating window onto New England as a developing, ratehr than static, or stagnant, colonial area."— The Journal of Religion

"This is a well-researched, nicely written and carefully thought out volume that makes it clear that there is more to be said about the Puritans. Breenis convincing in her argument that some of them were not so different from the rest of American colonists."—The Historian

From the Publisher