The Interpretation of Material Shapes in Puritanism: A Study of Rhetoric, Prejudice, and Violence (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture, Series Number 17) - Hardcover

Kibbey, Ann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521265096 ISBN 13: 9780521265096

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1986

Synopsis

The Interpretation of Material Shapes in Puritanism overturns many of our long-held assumptions about the social and artistic values of Protestantism. Dr Ann Kibbey offers a detailed analysis of the rhetoric of the Puritan plain style, centring her argument on the influential preacher John Cotton and discloses a general theory of figuration in the Protestant tradition that has been overlooked by literary critics, historians and sociologists alike. The author explores the immense variety of ways in which early Protestants in Europe and America granted significance to material shapes. Kibbery finds that in their perception of icons, their use of acoustic design in rhetoric and their interpretations of human beings as physical objects, early Protestants - and especially Puritans - worshipped the figurations of material life as privileged sources of meaning. In this book, Ann Kibbey draws conclusions far wider than her nominal subject, proposing that still-prevalent attitudes toward gender, culture and race were central to the fundamental beliefs of American Puritans.

About this title

Book Description

Examines the variety of ways in which early Protestants responded to material shapes: icons, acoustic shapes of speech, material objects and the physical shapes of humans. Reveals how reactions to material shapes took violent forms as evidenced in the development of prejudice from Calvin and Luther to the Puritan immigrants of Massachusetts Bay.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521265096
• ISBN 13: 9780521265096
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216