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9780801872518 Academic Inspection Copy

Providence Tales and the Birth of American Literature

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In colonial America, tales about the capture of English settlers by Native American war parties and the captives' subsequent suffering and privations were wildly popular among readers. Despite their importance in the development of American literature, however, the origins of the captivity narrative have until now been largely unexplored. In Providence Tales and the Birth of American Literature, James Hartman uncovers the genesis of the captivity narrative in the English providence tale and its transformation in the seventeenth century. Exploring the cultural context in which both English providence tales and their American counterparts emerged–focusing in particular on the way in which the providence tale folded the religious spirit of inquiry and truth-seeking into the new science and empiricism of the seventeenth century–Hartman offers a provocative reassessment of the origins of American literature.

""Hartman's impressive grounding of the captivity stories in a well-established tradition of providential narratives revises interpretations that attempt to describe the writings of Mary Rowlandson and other early Indian captives as indigenous productions that reflect an exceptionalist frontier experience. An important contribution to our understanding of the early captivity narratives as well as to our knowledge of the imaginative world of late seventeenth-century England and New England.""

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