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New English Canaan: Text, Notes, Biography & Criticism
New English Canaan Text Notes Biography Criticism Author:Thomas Morton The notorious Canaan (1637) is a 3-part portrait of Native New England peoples, of their landscape and its living creatures and "commodities," and of the broad range of early "planters" (from traders to Puritans and Pilgrims) who first colonized New England. Canaan is a rich Renaissance text full of Classical influences, witty observation, ... more »proto-anthropology and natural history, satire, English folk custom---and includes "The Revels of New Canaan," an account of the gun-trading Morton's 1627 Revels round his "Maypole of Merrymount" (or Ma-re Mount); for which he composed a "Poem" and (Drinking) "Song" which may turn out to be North America's first English poetry. Despite its Macchiavellian reputation, and except for recent facsimiles without notes, Canaan has been reprinted only twice before, in Force's 1836 Tracts and in 1883 by the Massachusetts Historical Society. This edition offers the first-ever fully collated text, and copious footnotes that provide grounds for further studies; plus the first full-length, 12-chapter Biography of Thomas Morton (from his West Country boyhood to the Inns of Court beside Jonson/young Shakespeare, to his American career, exiles, and final fate under Puritan New England's "new creed"). Also here are two large, multicultural, interdisciplinary bibliographies, and 40 Illustrations. The indispensible counter-text to the early canon of Puritan-American writings on America: you'll never see Morton's neighbors the Pilgrims, or Boston's Puritans including John Winthrop and Anne Bradstreet, the same again ("Canaan" is a place where most media conservative or liberal fear to tread!). According to the Preface, Canaan "continues to reign as the funniest, most multi-sided, wickedly educational performance amongst the entire first generation of humane letters, in any language, from the American frontiers."« less