INVENTING EDEN

494 Pages·2010·2.63 MB·English

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
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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
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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.

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For my very own Eve, a mother who knows.
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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,
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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