The Rites of Assent: Transformations in the Symbolic Construction of America

The Rites of Assent examines the cultural strategies through which "America" served as a vehicle simultaneously for diversity and cohesion, fusion and fragmentation. Taking an ethnographic, cross-cultural approach, The Rites of Assent traces the meanings and purposes of "America" back to the colonial typology of mission, and specifically (in chapters on Puritan rhetoric, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the movement from Revival to Revolution) to the legacy of early New England.

Sacvan Bercovitch is Carswell Professor of English at Harvard University and is currently the General Editor of the multi-volume Cambridge History of American Literature. His previous books include The Puritan Origins of the American Self, The American Jeremiad, and The Office "The Scarlet Letter."