Download or read book The Rites of Assent written by Sacvan Bercovitch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.