Land, Labor, and Colonial Economics in Thomas Morton's "New English Canaan"

Authors

Michelle Burnham, Santa Clara UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2006

Publisher

University of North Carolina Press

Abstract

As long as critics have written about it, Thomas Morton's New English Canaan has been positioned as a counterhistory to William Brad ford's canonical Of Plymouth Plantation. One vein of critical reception has dismissed Morton's text as a flawed literary anomaly, effectively re peating Bradford's own befuddled and anxious response to Morton's aes thetics.1 A smaller but impassioned vein of literary criticism has, in turn, elevated Morton over Bradford on the basis of his egalitarianism, proto environmentalism, or multiculturalism avant la lettre?essentially cele brating Morton as a more laudable expression of individualism and free dom than that represented by the pilgrims.2 Despite their differences, both of these critical responses keep intact the central terms of a liberal-nation alist American literary history that has obscured the global economic im plications of New England colonialism.

Comments

Copyright © 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. www.uncpress.unc.edu

Recommended Citation

Burnham, M. (2006). Land, Labor, and Colonial Economics in Thomas Morton's "New English Canaan" Early American Literature, 41(3), 405-428.