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Dissenting Bodies: Corporealities in Early New England

Amazon.com Price:  $55.69 (as of 19/04/2019 23:13 PST- Details)

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Description

For the Puritan separatists of seventeenth-century New England, “godliness,” as manifested by the body, used to be the sign of election, and the body, with its material demands and metaphorical significance, became the axis upon which all colonial activity and non secular meaning turned.

Drawing on literature, documents, and essential studies of embodiment as practiced within the New England colonies, Martha L. Finch launches an interesting investigation into the scientific, theological, and cultural conceptions of corporeality at a pivotal moment in Anglo-Protestant history. Not only were settlers forced to interact bodily with native populations and other “new world” communities, they also fought starvation and illness; were whipped, branded, hanged, and murdered; sang, prayed, and preached; engaged in sexual relations; and were baptized in keeping with their faith. These kind of activities shaped the colonists’ understanding of their existence and the godly principles of their young society.

Finch focuses specifically on Plymouth Colony and people who endeavored to make visible what they believed to be God’s divine will. Quakers, Indians, and others challenged these beliefs, and the constant struggle to live to tell the tale, build cohesive communities, and control behavior forced further adjustments. Merging theological, medical, and other positions on corporeality with testimonies on colonial life, Finch brilliantly complicates our encounter with early Puritan New England.

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