Date of Award

11-1975

Degree Type

Master's Essay - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Literatures, Languages, and Cultures

First Advisor

John D. Krugler

Abstract

In recent years, Perry Miller has been one of the most controversial figures in historical circles. The controversy stemmed in large part from Miller's unique methodological approach to the writing of history and particularly how he applied it to his study of the Puritans. By the mid-1920's, when Miller began his academic career, most American scholars looked upon American Puritan Studies as "a dead subject area" as far as historical research was concerned. Kenneth B. Murdock and Samuel Eliot Morison formed the vanguard of those who opposed this viewpoint; but it was Perry Miller, who was to be their student and later their colleague, who made the greatest impact as far as stimulating interest in the Puritans. He did this in a most unconventional way. Puritan New England became Miller's laboratory not as a means of examining the Puritans, but rather their ideas. However in examining the ideas of the Puritans, Miller also told us more about the Puritans than any other historian in the previous forty years.

Comments

A Masters Essay submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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