English

The Versified Lives of Unknown Puritans

Document Type

Article

Abstract

I want to begin today by offering a new way of understanding Puritan poetry. Not because I wish to challenge literary-historical distinctions. Rather, I’m proposing a thought experiment, conceived to reorient our approach to the poetic text via its materiality in circulation (or non-circulation), particularly its survival, preservation, and recovery over time. Let me then begin by suggesting three alternative generic categories of Puritan poetry—the “preferred visible,” the “acknowledged visible,” and the “invisible.”

Publication Title

Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America

Publication Date

2013

Volume

107

Issue

3

First Page

355

Last Page

366

ISSN

0006-128X

DOI

10.1086/680808

Keywords

Puritan, New England, poetry

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