James D Hartman. Providence Tales a...

James D Hartman. Providence Tales and the Birth of American Literature. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP 1999 202 pp ISBN 0-8018-6027-X $3850

Providence tales are stories, repeatedly gathered in popular miscellaneous collections, which Puritans (and other Nonconformist Protestant ministers in England) told in order to confirm the working of providence in human lives. individual title epitomizes the scope and ambition of these collections, Richard Baxter's 1691 The Certainty of the World of Spirits, and Consequently of the Immortality of essences Of the Malice and Misery of the Devil and