Description: The book is about John Eliot and his mission to Massachusetts Bay; it analyzes the English-speaking and Algonquian-speaking communities that coalesced in the process of this missionary project. In this context, the study pays special attention to the reception of speech and te...
Review Quotes: "In Connecting Communities in Seventeenth-Century New England, Kathryn Gray offers a fresh look at the cultural significance of John Eliot's mission. Arguing that Eliot was the hub of a transatlantic discourse melding millennial politics and shrewd promotion, Gray traces the many 'reception communities' in which Eliot was involved. Her use of a range of texts, from private correspondence, to missionary tracts, to the marginalia of Algonquian Bible readers provides a complex portrait of Eliot's influence. Yet Gray renders with equal clarity the portraits of Eliot's converts, allowing us to glimpse how Natives sought power and influence by merging Christian attitudes with their own. This is a challenging, lucidly argued study indispensable to an understanding of Eliot and his era." --Joseph Fichtelberg, Hofstra University