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

by Sacvan Bercovitch

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.

Genres: History, Politics, American History, 20th Century, Research

432 pages, ebook

First published November 10, 1992

About the author

Sacvan Bercovitch was a Canadian literary and cultural critic who spent most of his life teaching and writing in the United States. He received his B.A. at Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) in 1958, and his Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University) in 1965. Bercovitch taught at Brandeis, the University of California-San Diego, Princeton, and at Columbia from 1970 to 1984. From 1984 until he retired in 2001 he taught at Harvard, where he held the Powell M. Cabot Professorship in American Literature.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Describes how, from the time of the Puritans, the ideology of "America" has offered a way to envision consensus within dissensus -- through expansion and continual revolution. In this way, even resistance and dissent in America have actually supported and renewed the dominant ideology of progress. From the time of the Puritans, Bercovitch argues, Americans have perceived their common identity as one of an unfulfilled mission.