Abstract
Despite the considerable attention devoted to the founding of puritan colonies in New England, scholars have routinely discounted several printed tracts that describe this episode of history as works of New England literature. This study examines the reasons for this historiographical oversight and, through a close reading of the texts, identifies six works written and printed between 1620 and 1630 as the beginnings of a new type of literature. The production of these tracts supported efforts to establish puritan settlements in New England. Their respective authors wrote, not to record a historical moment for posterity, but to cultivate a particular colonial reality among their contemporaries in England. By infusing puritan discourse into the language of colonization, these writers advanced a colonial agenda independent of commercial, political and religious imperatives in England. As a distinctive response to a complex set of historical circumstances on both sides of the Atlantic, these works collectively represent the rise of New England literature.
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