The concept of America in the Puritan mind

Abstract

This article focuses on the conceptualization of America in Puritan prose works. My assumption is that, with the help of a multitextual approach, i.e. the consideration of several prose works from several authors of the Puritan era, such as William Bradford, William Byrd, John Cotton, Edward Johnson, Cotton Mather, Mary Rowlandson, Thomas Shepard, William Stoughton and John Winthrop, we can develop a detailed account of the way Puritans understood their immigration experiences. My analysis is presented within the framework of conceptual metaphor analysis as proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Lakoff and Turner (1989), and of conceptual blending analysis as given by Fauconnier and Turner (1998). The two methods complement each other and combine our knowledge of the Puritan concept of America present in various literary texts.