
Theologies of Pain
Literary Bodies and Afflicted Forms in Puritan New England
Lucas Hardy(Author)
Bloomsbury Academic (Publisher)
Published on 14. November 2024
Book
Hardback
232 pages
978-1-350-40036-8 (ISBN)
Description
With the arrival of Puritan settlers in New England in the middle decades of the 17th-century, accounts of sickness, colonial violence, and painful religious transformation quickly emerged, enabling new forms of testimonial writing in prose and poetry. Investigating a broad transatlantic archive of religious literature, historical medical science, and philosophies of sensation, this book explores how Puritan America contemplated pain and ascribed meaning to it in writing.
By weaving the experience of pained bodies into popular public discourse, Hardy shows how Puritans imagined the pained Christian body, whilst simultaneously marginalizing and vilifying those who expressed suffering by different measures, including Indigenous Americans and unorthodox colonists. Focusing on pain as it emerged from spaces of inchoate settlement and colonial violence, he provides new understandings of early American nationalism and connected racial tropes which persist today.
By weaving the experience of pained bodies into popular public discourse, Hardy shows how Puritans imagined the pained Christian body, whilst simultaneously marginalizing and vilifying those who expressed suffering by different measures, including Indigenous Americans and unorthodox colonists. Focusing on pain as it emerged from spaces of inchoate settlement and colonial violence, he provides new understandings of early American nationalism and connected racial tropes which persist today.
Reviews / Votes
Hardy curates a compelling archive of writing about pain from antiquity to the present that creates a rich interpretive context for New England Puritan writing. His examination of discourses of pain offers a fresh approach to familiar Puritan authors, genres, and tropes. * Elisabeth Ceppi, Professor of English, Portland State University, USA *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
College/higher education
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-350-40036-8 (9781350400368)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
10/2024
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€31.99
Available for download
Person
Lucas Hardy is Associate Professor of English at Youngstown State University, USA.
Content
Introduction: Puritan Pain and the Doctrine of Affliction
1. Afflicting the Massachusetts Bay Colony
2. Sublimated Women's Pain and the Puritan Public
3. Anne Bradstreet's Poetics of Pain
4. Humoral Hunger and Comparative Melancholy in Mary Rowlandson's Sovereignty and Goodness of God
5. Cotton Mather's Grammar of Pain
6. New England Evangelicalism and the Limits of Affliction
Bibliography
Index
1. Afflicting the Massachusetts Bay Colony
2. Sublimated Women's Pain and the Puritan Public
3. Anne Bradstreet's Poetics of Pain
4. Humoral Hunger and Comparative Melancholy in Mary Rowlandson's Sovereignty and Goodness of God
5. Cotton Mather's Grammar of Pain
6. New England Evangelicalism and the Limits of Affliction
Bibliography
Index