Unmoored
The Search for Sincerity in Colonial America
Ana Schwartz
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press
Published: 01/2023
Pages: 296
Subject: History, Social Science, Literary Criticism
Print ISBN: 9781469671772
eBook ISBN: 9781469671796
DESCRIPTION
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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