Unmoored: The Search for Sincerity in Colonial America (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press)

Schwartz, Ana

ISBN 10: 1469671778 / ISBN 13: 9781469671772

Published by Omohundro Institute and UNC Pres, 2023

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Unmoored: The Search for Sincerity in Colonial America (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press)
• Publisher: Omohundro Institute and UNC Pres
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1469671778
• ISBN 13: 9781469671772
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Ana Schwartz is assistant professor of English at University of Texas at Austin