Word: nehemius
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...LITERARY KEY to late Puritan ideology, Bercovitch chooses not the jeremiads but Cotton Mather's epic work, the Magnalia Christi Americana--particularly his "Life of John Winthrop." In his "Life," Mather portrays Winthrop as a "Nehemius Americanus," a peculiarly American saviour whose life foreshadows the Second Coming. Mather's ambition, according to Bercovitch, is to be the Winthrop of his generation; writing during the decline of theocracy, Mather, he says, offered himself--in his capacity as a representative American type--as a link between the triumphal era of Winthrop and the millenial future, thus initiating a special mode of defining...
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