INVENTING EDEN: PRIMITIVISM, MILLENNIALISM, AND THE MAKING OF NEW ENGLAND Zachary McLeod Hutchins A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2010 Approved by: Philip Gura Reid Barbour Laurie Maffly-Kipp Timothy Marr Mary Floyd-Wilson Eliza Richards © 2010 Zachary McLeod Hutchins ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT ZACHARY McLEOD HUTCHINS Inventing Eden: Primitivism, Millennialism, and the Making of New England (Under the Direction of Philip Gura) Seventeenth-century exegetes described Eden as a three-fold paradise because they believed that Adam and Eve lived in “an external garden of delight,” possessed incorrupt physiologies, and enjoyed intellectual, spiritual, and social perfections before the Fall. Accordingly, the dissertation is organized thematically, treating the ways in which New England colonists sought to mold their lands, bodies, minds, language, souls, and social spheres after the pattern provided in Eden. Chapter one traces the transition of terms used to describe the New England landscape from the present “paradise” of John Smith to the “hideous and desolate wilderness” of William Bradford and the prospective “Paradise” of Cotton Mather. Chapter two outlines programs of physiological reform, as colonists like Anne Bradstreet disciplined their physical bodies and ministers like Edward Taylor regulated the ecclesiastical body’s consumption of communion in order to achieve humoral temperance—the somatic and spiritual state of Adam and Eve in Eden. Chapters three and four document Francis Bacon’s influence on educational and linguistic aspirations in New England. I argue that because the encyclopedic knowledge and divinely denotative language of Adam were believed to be inseparably linked, Leonard Hoar’s plans to turn Harvard into the world’s first experimental laboratory in chemistry situated at a university and John Cotton’s attempt to model the language of the Bay Psalm Book after the lingua humana of iii Eden should be understood as related endeavors, companion contributions from New England to the Baconian project for the instauration of prelapsarian intellectual perfections. Chapter five examines the ways in which ministers of the Great Awakening presented Adam and Eve to their congregants as types of Christian conversion, and chapter six details the process by which theories of natural law distilled from Genesis became the basis for colonial rebellion and republican government through the influence of Oceana, James Harrington’s vision of an idealized, edenic republic. Spanning two centuries and surveying the works of major British and American authors from George Herbert and John Milton to Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin, Inventing Eden is the history of an idea that irrevocably altered the theology, literature, and culture of early modern New England. iv For my very own Eve, a mother who knows. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS No one, sadly, volunteered to write this dissertation for me, but many contributed their time, talents, and other assets so that I could write more cogently and more quickly than I ever would have been able to on my own. Much as I would like to I cannot name all of those who helped me to learn and write about Eden—time and space will not permit. But the following individuals simply must be mentioned; without them this study would not exist in anything like its current form. My first debt is to Janet Garrard, who persuaded me that such a work was possible. The Brigham Young University Office of Research and Creative Activities allowed me to pursue the dreams that she awakened by financially supporting the mentorship of Steve Walker, whose wisdom continues to be a source of strength. David Shields and the anonymous readers for Early American Literature, who reviewed the essay has since become Chapter 5, were enormously generous in their treatment of undergraduate writing, and their patient feedback continues to shape my understanding of how to write for the academy. After I thought I had learned to write, Eliza Richards—who reads more carefully than anyone I know—taught me to revise, for which I am deeply grateful. Reid Barbour never allowed me to rest on my laurels, and the breadth of this study is a testament to both the capacious curiosity he constantly exudes and his willingness to tutor me on the finer points of seventeenth-century British culture. Laurie Maffly-Kipp introduced me to a world outside of English department readings lists and understood the point of this study before anyone else, vi even myself. Mary Floyd-Wilson deserves a special note of thanks for being patient enough and honest enough to persistently point out the flaws in early drafts until I was ready to listen to her invaluable critiques and for introducing me to the Folger Institute, where David Hall, Laura Lunger Knoppers, and the members of our seminar on “Forms of Religious Experience in the 17th-Century British Atlantic World” provided feedback that dramatically influenced this project’s trajectory. The Americanist Writing Group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also provided helpful feedback on early drafts of several chapters; Angie Calcaterra and Kelly Bezio did more than anyone had a right to expect in making that group’s work possible. The friendship of Tim Marr was a pleasant surprise to a young graduate student; I hope that someday I will learn to imitate his endless enthusiasm and knack for asking just the right question. My final and largest academic debt is to Philip Gura. His scholarship brought me to Chapel Hill and laid a groundwork for all that follows in this study; his expertise opened doors and books that I never would have found on my own; and his unflagging support gave me a reason to hope that I might someday succeed. I will always be his student. Even with all of this intellectual firepower behind me, I could never have completed this dissertation without the support of family and friends, who made it possible for me to spend hours in solitude without worrying overmuch about what was happening outside of my office. I thank my father- and mother-in-law, Jerry and Nancy Ogarek, for making sure I had the proverbial “five hundred pounds and a room of my own.” I thank Akram and Jodi Khater for their friendship and seemingly unbounded optimism. I thank my brother Richard for setting the bar so high and then daring me to jump. I thank my parents, Kenneth and Priscilla, for finding the courage to be interested in my work and for raising me in the New England vii Puritan tradition. I thank my sons: Kenneth MacLeod for staying asleep while we shared an office/nursery; David Hyrum for his uplifting hugs; and Gabriel Ogarek for his energetic invitations to leave it all behind and play at the end of each day. But most of all, I thank my wife and muse, Alana. She is both the reason I write and the reason I stop writing, the summum bonum of my life. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES...................................................................................................................xii INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................1 Edenic Past, Edenic Future: The Turn from Primitivism to Millennialism...................3 The Limits and Labor of Eden: Separating the Ideal from the Idyllic.........................17 Invention: Discovery, Interpretation, and Innovation..................................................31 Intellectual Roots, Cultural Fruits: Grounding Intellectual History............................37 Inventing Eden: Methods and Materials......................................................................45 CHAPTERS I. FINDING PARADISE, INVENTING WILDERNESS: THE GEOGRAPHICAL POSSIBILITIES AND AGRICULTURAL REALITIES OF COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND.......................................................56 Finding Paradise: “The More I Looked, the More I Liked It.”....................................59 Cultivating Wilderness: Importing English Order and Invention................................83 Confronting Failure: The Inward Turn......................................................................102 II. A BODY UNEMBARRASSED: HUMORAL EMPOWERMENT AND ASPIRATIONS TO EDENIC TEMPERANCE..............................................111 Other-Fashioning: The Limits of Humoral Empowerment.......................................119 Engendering Edenic Temperance: The Sexing of Medicine.....................................123 Embarrassed By Sin: Humoral Correctives for Ecclesiastical Intemperance............139 The Humoral Inheritance: Pauper to Printer..............................................................156 ix Edenic Body, American Identity................................................................................163 III. THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON: ADAM, EVE, AND BACON’S LEGACY IN NEW ENGLAND................................................................................165 New England as New Atlantis: Cotton’s Epistemological Mandate.........................172 The Aims of a College: Harvard’s Place in the Paradisiacal Tradition.....................180 The Wisdom of Anne Bradstreet: Imitating Elizabeth, Outdoing Solomon..............192 An Edenic Enlightenment: The Science of Mather and Edwards..............................211 IV. TRANSLATIONS OF EDEN: HEBREW, HERBERT, AND THE NEW ENGLAND INTEREST IN LINGUISTIC PURITY......................................217 Entering The Temple: Two Paths Back to Paradisiacal Purity..................................226 “In the Beginning Was the Word”: The Plain Language of the Bay Psalm Book.........................................................................................................237 “Make my Leaden Whittle, Metall Good”: Edward Taylor and the Alchemy of Eden.......................................................................................................262 Paradise Lost, Paradise Regain’d: The Eighteenth-Century Move to Milton....................................................................................................................272 V. FROM ADAM’S INNOCENCE TO EVE’S REGENERACY: ALTERNATIVE MODELS AND MORPHOLOGIES OF CONVERSION IN EARLY MODERN NEW ENGLAND.....................................279 Exemplary Pilgrims: Seventeenth-Century Narratives of Conversion......................289 First Stirrings: Preparing for the New Birth in New England...................................300 Labor and Delivery: Edwards, Eve, and the New Birth............................................314 The After Birth: Eve’s Impact on Edwards and the Awakenings..............................322 VI. ‘OUT OF CHAOS AND CONFUSION’: THE BELATED CREATION AND ANTICIPATED FALL OF HARRINGTON’S EDENIC REPUBLIC.................................................................................................328 Declaring Eden: Jefferson, Grotius, and the Natural Law Tradition.........................330 The Architecture of Eden: Right Reason and Republican Government....................344 x