Were indigenous Americans descendants of the lost tribes of Israel? From the moment Europeans realized Columbus had landed in a place unknown to them in 1492, they began speculating about how the Americas and their inhabitants fit into the Bible. For many, the most compelling explanation was the Hebraic Indian theory, which proposed that indigenous Americans were the descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. For its proponents, the theory neatly explained why this giant land and its inhabitants were not mentioned in the Biblical record. In Old Canaan in a New World, Elizabeth Fenton shows that though the Hebraic Indian theory may seem far-fetched today, it had a great deal of currency and significant influence over a very long period of American history. Indeed, at different times the idea that indigenous Americans were descended from the lost tribes of Israel was taken up to support political and religious positions on diverse issues including Christian millennialism, national expansion, trade policies, Jewish rights, sovereignty in the Americas, and scientific exploration. Through analysis of a wide collection of writings—from religious texts to novels—Fenton sheds light on a rarely explored but important part of religious discourse in early America. As the Hebraic Indian theory evolved over the course of two centuries, it revealed how religious belief and national interest intersected in early American history.

This work explores the relationship between history and fiction in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. As Alide Cagidemetrio shows, both writers were preoccupied with a past - a preoccupation whose antecedents could be traced to the novels of Walter Scott. Yet they departed from established tradition in significant ways. Unlike their literary predecessors, who sought historical authenticity in the representation of past events, Hawthorne and Melville upheld a new idea of history, one based on the relevance of past to present, and, by extension, of present to future. Cagidemetrio grounds her analysis in the cultural context in which Hawthorne and Melville wrote, an era of unprecedented change when signs of the past were disappearing at an ever-quickening pace. Focusing on Hawthorne's "Legends of the Province-House," and his unfinished romances, and on Melville's much-neglected "Israel Potter," she demonstrates how both writers consciously experimented in writing the past "anew." Together, their historical fictions reflect the rise of a modern "historical consciousness," as Henry James calls it, as well as an effort to give form to the chaotic flux of change over time.

The images themselves range from early expeditionary documentation to responses that dispute the historical accuracy of previous photography."--BOOK JACKET.

This nine volume set presents in easily accessible format the extensive information now available about John Milton. It has grown to be a study of English civilization of Milton's time and a history of literary and political matters since then.