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Governing the tongue : the politics of speech in early New England /
Colonial New Englanders would have found our modern notions of free speech very strange indeed. Children today shrug off harsh words by chanting "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me," but in the seventeenth century people felt differently. "A soft tongue...
| Clasificación: | Libro Electrónico |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Electrónico eBook |
| Idioma: | Inglés |
| Publicado: |
New York :
Oxford University Press,
1997.
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| Temas: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Texto completo |
| Sumario: | Colonial New Englanders would have found our modern notions of free speech very strange indeed. Children today shrug off harsh words by chanting "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me," but in the seventeenth century people felt differently. "A soft tongue breaketh the bone," they often said. Governing the Tongue explains why the spoken word assumed such importance in the culture of early New England. Author Jane Kamensky re-examines such famous Puritan events as the Salem witch trials and the banishment of Anne Hutchinson to expose the ever-present fear of what the puritans called "sins of the tongue." But even while dangerous or deviant speech was restricted, Kamensky points out, godly speech was continuously praised and promoted. Congregations were told that one should ones voice "like a trumpet" to God and "cry out and cease not." By placing speech at the heart of familiar stories of Puritan New England, Kamensky develops new ideas about the relationship between speech and power both in Puritan New England and, by extension, in our world today. |
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| Descripción Física: | 1 online resource (ix, 291 pages) : illustrations |
| Bibliografía: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-280) and index. |
| ISBN: | 0585223483 9780585223483 1280449845 9781280449840 9780195090802 0195090802 9786610449842 6610449848 9780195351361 0195351363 |