Andrew Carnegie
PRECIS #1: Nathan Barber
Santa Margarita Catholic HS
1st Period-John Braithwaite-Instructor
Were the Puritans Puritanical?
By Carl Degler, Stanford University
THESIS: Carl Degler, in this provocative article, takes issue with the popular notion that the Puritans were people who had “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy” as advocated by Mencken, Macaulay, & Heffner who got it all wrong! They are not repressed sex misfits and bigots, but rather, keepers of the Victorian moral code with the highest levels of education anywhere in the colonies.
Degler Discounts the distortions of Puritans:
Mencken, Macaulay, and Heffner distort rather than illuminate the essential character of Puritans.
The word, “Puritan” has become encrusted with a good many barnacles that need to be stripped away. Often historians must declare what something is not, as well as, what it is! In the case of Puritanism—it is not synonymous with repression, fear, and sexual abstinence at all levels.
This current usage of the adjective form of the term is misleading, incorrect, and unfair. Puritans cautioned against excess of merry-making. The Mather quote is appropriate: “Wine is of God… but the drunkard is from the Devil.”
Among the Cotton clan, John Cotton saw little to object to in dancing between the sexes as long as it was not lascivious.
In matters of dress the Massachusetts colony endeavored to wear “something modest” Puritan dress was the opposite of severe, long hair was acceptable among the upper-class. They detested that men and women of a mean condition should take upon themselves the garb of gentlemen.”
If the Puritans are to be saved from the canard of severity of dress, it is also worth while to soften the charge that they were opposed to music and art!
Well known American Puritans like Samuel Sewell and John Milton were sincere lovers of music. After all this was the age of Bach, Handel, Gluck and Monteverdi.
The King Charles
Santa Margarita Catholic HS
1st Period-John Braithwaite-Instructor
Were the Puritans Puritanical?
By Carl Degler, Stanford University
THESIS: Carl Degler, in this provocative article, takes issue with the popular notion that the Puritans were people who had “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy” as advocated by Mencken, Macaulay, & Heffner who got it all wrong! They are not repressed sex misfits and bigots, but rather, keepers of the Victorian moral code with the highest levels of education anywhere in the colonies.
Degler Discounts the distortions of Puritans:
Mencken, Macaulay, and Heffner distort rather than illuminate the essential character of Puritans.
The word, “Puritan” has become encrusted with a good many barnacles that need to be stripped away. Often historians must declare what something is not, as well as, what it is! In the case of Puritanism—it is not synonymous with repression, fear, and sexual abstinence at all levels.
This current usage of the adjective form of the term is misleading, incorrect, and unfair. Puritans cautioned against excess of merry-making. The Mather quote is appropriate: “Wine is of God… but the drunkard is from the Devil.”
Among the Cotton clan, John Cotton saw little to object to in dancing between the sexes as long as it was not lascivious.
In matters of dress the Massachusetts colony endeavored to wear “something modest” Puritan dress was the opposite of severe, long hair was acceptable among the upper-class. They detested that men and women of a mean condition should take upon themselves the garb of gentlemen.”
If the Puritans are to be saved from the canard of severity of dress, it is also worth while to soften the charge that they were opposed to music and art!
Well known American Puritans like Samuel Sewell and John Milton were sincere lovers of music. After all this was the age of Bach, Handel, Gluck and Monteverdi.
The King Charles