American Spaces of Conversion

The religious precepts of the Puritans continued to affect intellectual life in the U.S. long after the immigrants arrived at Massachusetts Bay circulating through New England culture well into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Using three emblematic figures--Jonathan Edwards Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James--American Spaces of Conversion examines how the Puritan legacy especially the concept of conversion shaped developments in American literature theology and pragmatist philosophy.Knutson grounds her study with the testimonies collected by the Puritan minister Thomas Shepard which reveal an active pursuit of belief occurring at the intersection of perception intellection affection and doctrine. This pursuit of belief codified in the morphology of conversion was originally undertaken by the Puritans as a way to conceptualize redemption in a fallen state. It established the epistemological contours for what Edwards Emerson and James would theorize as a conductive imaginary-consciousness a state both receptive and active as a force responsible for translating the effects of experience and generating original relations with self community and God. With an interdisciplinary approach that combines religion literature and philosophy Knutson demonstrates how the triad of writers discussed here ministered to their audiences encouraging the attachment of new meaning to ordinary contexts in a continual effort toward regeneration.