| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Laura Lunger Knoppers, editor. Puritanism and Its Discontents. Newark: University of Delaware Press. 2003. Pp. 264. $45.50.
Puritanism has been credited with everything from the invention of modern science to the rise of capitalism. Given such suspiciously extravagant claims, it was perhaps inevitable that the godly would fall victim to the forces of historiographical reaction. Beginning in the 1960s, scholars began to argue that Puritanism was a less radical force than had hitherto been believed. In tune with the broader revisionist perspective sweeping the field of seventeenth-century English history, Puritans were portrayed not as furious radicals, recklessly reshaping the world in which they lived, but rather as deeply conservative figures, closely allied with the political and religious establishments in England until the hostility of Charles I's regime forced them into opposition. In the United States, meanwhile, the Puritan-centered vision of American colonial history was likewise under strain, as scholars sought to deemphasize the Cottons and the Mathers and to recover the history of those who had been silently buried beneath their magisterial grandeur.	1
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the historiographical winds have begun to shift again. Laura Lunger Knoppers's collection, which brings together eleven essays by scholars working across disciplines, is part of a growing trend that seeks to modify this revisionist picture. As she explains, the book is designed to "restore the anxiety-ridden and radical nature of Puritans" (p. 13) so as to recapture the vitality and intensity that made the godly such a formidable force. The essays are bound together by their mutual focus on the ways in which Puritanism produced "discontent," both among adherents and opponents.	. . .

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