Anti-Puritanism and the Making of the Puritan Tradition

Abstract The history of anti-puritanism is in effect the history of puritanism, since the self-image of those called puritans—some of whom came to refer to themselves though that very term—was integrally connected to the negative stereotypes and associations used to type them as puritans in the first place. This chapter seeks to provide a necessarily schematic narrative of the development of various strands of anti-puritanism, operating on a number of discursive levels—formal polemic, dramatic, and popular stereotype—wielded both by the conformist and popular opponents of the godly and then latterly by different types of puritan against one another. The intention is to give some sense over the longue duree of the dialectical dialogic relations between various sorts of anti-puritanism and the different strands of opinion that made up the puritan tradition.