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Title of Thesis Or Dissertation, Worded SPEAKING, SILENTLY SPEAKING: THOMAS SHEPARD'S “CONFESSIONS” AND THE CULTURAL IMPACT OF PURITAN CONVERSION ON EARLY AND LATER AMERICA by ALEXANDER WILLIAM YOUNG III A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of English and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2012 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Alexander W. Young III Title: Speaking, Silently Speaking: Thomas Shepard's “Confessions” and the Cultural Impact of Puritan Conversion on Early and Later America This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of English by: Gordon Sayre Chair William Rossi Member Paul Peppis Member Mathew Dennis Outside Member and Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research & Innovation/Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded March 2012 ii © 2012 Alexander W. Young III iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Alexander W. Young Doctor of Philosophy Department of English March 2012 Title: Speaking, Silently Speaking: Thomas Shepard's “Confessions” and the Cultural Impact of Puritan Conversion on Early and Later America My dissertation reappraises the Puritan conversion narrative's influence on early and later American literature. It centers around the accounts recorded by the Reverend Thomas Shepard, minister to Cambridge's first church, and looks at how New England's earliest settlers represented their spiritual encounters. My study argues for Puritanism's continued cultural relevance by explaining how the inter-personal, social, and expressive energies that informed Puritan spiritual confession is both sustained and evolves in the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Chapter I accounts for the social, historical, and intellectual contexts in which the Puritan conversion narrative took place and outlines the scholarship it has received. Amid this scholarship I offer my analysis in Chapter II, pointing to the performance's formal, doctrinal, and expressive requirements to explain how believers delivered successful narratives and how they pushed the bounds of the religious doctrine that informed their accounts. Chapter III re-imagines the experience of Puritan conversion. It considers the performance from an affective framework and argues that the ambivalence endemic to spiritual assurance provoked in believers a psychogenic and narratological discord that promoted a form of self-understanding in which believers were unsure of themselves iv even as their spiritual communities were certain that their conversions were complete. Chapter III concludes by assessing the literary consequences of this relationship with reference to Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography as I look ahead to the conversion narrative's development in the 18th century, especially in writing. In Chapter IV, I reflect on the conversion narrative's role in the Great Awakening. I focus on two 18th century black Atlantic autobiographers, James Albert Gronniosaw and John Marrant, whose spiritual narratives give evidence of the Puritan conversion narrative's formal and ideological continuity. Chapter V considers how Puritan confession can be read against two canonical works of 19th century American fiction – Washington's Irving's “Rip Van Winkle” and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Finally, Chapter VI theorizes how Puritan spirituality has come to shape contemporary American culture by reading the tenets, sentiment, and religious and expressive practices first initiated in Shepard's Cambridge against the ideology informing Alcoholics Anonymous' 12-Step program. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Alexander W. Young III GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene New York University, NYC, NY George Washington University, Washington, DC DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, English, 2012, University of Oregon Master of Arts, English, 2006, New York University Bachelor of Arts, English, Philosophy, 2002, New York University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Early American Literature Religious Studies Social Psychology PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of English, University of Oregon, Eugene, 2007-2011 English Instructor, Riverdale Country Day School, Bronx, NY, Summer, 2000 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Graduate Teaching Fellowship, English, 2007 to present Rudolf Ernst Award, University of Oregon, 2010 President's Award, George Washington University, 1999 University of Oregon Doctoral Research Fellowship (nominated) Dan Kimble First Year Teaching Award (nominated) vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express my sincere thanks to Professor Gordon Sayre for his guidance, support, and friendship in the lengthy process of the creation of this project. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee – Professor William Rossi, Professor Mathew Dennis, and Professor Paul Peppis – for their assistance and intellectual openness during the writing and defending process. Also, I would like to thank the professors at New York University who inspired me to pursue the study of early American literature in the first place and often in unconventional ways. Finally, I'd like to convey my gratitude to the English Department at the University of Oregon, which offered me the Rudolf Ernst Award when it was very much needed, and which provided me a home away from home as an East-coaster living in the land of the Pacific Northwest. vii For Maman Shirin and Daddy Alex viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................. 1 Notes...................................................................................................................... 19 II. PERFORMING THE PART OF PURITAN CONVERT: THE PURITAN CONVERSION NARRATIVE AND THE ELASTICITY OF ASSENT.............. 23 Notes...................................................................................................................... 66 III. ANXIETY UNTO ASSURANCE: PURPOSE, PARADOX, AND THE PSYCHODYNAMIC EXPERIENCE OF PURITAN CONVERSION................ 71 Notes...................................................................................................................... 129 IV. “I WILL MAKE DARKNESS, LIGHT”: CONVERSION, CONVENTION, AND SELF-AUTHORIZATION IN 18th CENTURY BLACK ATLANTIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY............................................................................................ 133 Notes...................................................................................................................... 189 V. CONVERTING THE CANONICAL: REGENERATION, “RIP VAN WINKLE,” AND MOBY-DICK ............................................................................ 194 Notes...................................................................................................................... 235 VI. “THEN, NURTURED BY THE PROGRAM, THAT INNER SPIRIT GREW”: SPIRITUAL REGENERATION, STORY-TELLING, AND THE RELIGIOUS IMPACT OF PURITAN CONFESSION ON ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS.... 237 Notes...................................................................................................................... 290 REFERENCES CITED................................................................................................ 295 ix CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Francis Moore came to the Massachusetts Bay colony with his wife and their two children some time in the mid-1630s. A coppersmith by trade, Moore was also the owner of a tannery business. He became a member of Thomas Shepard’s church – Cambridge's first – on the 22nd of May, 1638 at about the age of fifty. Moore began participating in local government soon thereafter, rising to occupy the position of constable in 1659. Although little else is known about Moore's life, records show that at his death in 1671 Moore possessed barely fifty-seven pounds and owed what at the time would be considered a scant fifty acres, thus placing him below average in economic status.1 Modest as Moore's social standing was, he was still rated highly by New England’s congregational order, Moore having served as an elder at the head of Jonathan Mitchell’s pastorate. Yet in the grand scheme of things, Moore's ascent to respectability, which included his becoming an exemplary member of his spiritual community, would not have been possible had he not complied that late Spring day in 1638 with the requirement of giving a personal account of the experiences leading to his conversion, a demand required of all who wished to join a church in the early Bay colony. A one-time public performance, yet one often rehearsed privately in the presence of an attending minister, this ritual was devised by New England's early leaders, Shepard among them, to consolidate congregational authority. Granting full communion only to those who could attest to having experienced saving grace, ministers used the rite to create religious consensus in their parishes. By conferring the title of “visible saint” on applicants who could deliver a convincing testament of faith, ministers could keep those whose speeches did not give evidence of sincere conviction out of their churches. In turn, those whose speeches met the demand were admitted to their folds and considered full members. From both a practical and ideological perspective, to ask believers to deliver conversion narratives was a way Puritan ministers enforced a uniform conception of regeneration and
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