UTOPIAN PROMISE - Annenberg Media

[4781] Anonymous, Detail of the
Eliakim Hayden Stone (1797), courtesy
of Wesleyan University.
“PURITAN TYPOLOGY”
WEB ARCHIVE
[1243] Peter Pelham, Portrait of Cotton
Mather (1728), courtesy of the Library of
Congress [LC-USZ62-92308]. This portrait
of Cotton Mather was composed in
the year of his death, 1728. The grandson
of John Cotton and the eldest son of
Increase Mather, Cotton Mather became
the foremost Puritan theologian of his
generation and is often blamed for the
religious hysteria that spawned the
Salem witch trials.
[6324] Sarony and Major, The Landing
of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, Dec.
11th, 1620 (1846), courtesy of the
Library of Congress [LC-USZC4-4311].
Although no evidence directly links the
Mayflower’s 1620 landing to Plymouth
Rock, this location has come to represent
the birthplace of English settlement
in New England.
[7181] Michael J. Colacurcio,
Interview: “The Puritans and Biblical
42 UNIT 3, UTOPIAN PROMISE
Old Testament judea capta, or Israel in bondage. Her purifying ordeal
in the wilderness reflects God’s punishment of the “New Israel” for its
sins. Her redemption from captivity reflects New England’s reinstatement
in God’s favor.
Of course, her narrative also offers evidence that typology provided
Rowlandson with a more personal, individualized kind of comfort.
She articulates her suffering through the words of Old Testament figures,
drawing strength from understanding her own experience
through theirs. Likening herself to Job, the good servant of God who is
afflicted by a bewildering set of misfortunes in order to test the depth
of his faith, Rowlandson seeks comfort in the notion that God’s ways
are beyond human understanding, but that his servants must remain
patient and faithful. Like Rowlandson’s narrative, the Eliakim Hayden
gravestone (Essex, Connecticut, 1797) offers an example of typology
applied to the individual life. The carved design of the stone shows
Noah’s ark, floating on the floodwaters, while a dove flies overhead
with a cross in the background. Puritans understood the Old
Testament story of Noah as a prefiguring, or type, of Christ, and the
flood as a type of baptism. The cross and the dove carved on the stone,
then, serve as antitypes representing Christ offering salvation for
Adam’s original sin. The epitaph clarifies the typological imagery: “As
in Adame, all mankinde / Did guilt and death derive / So by the
Righteousness of Christ / Shall all be made alive.” Implicitly including
Hayden’s life within its typological reading—his soul is clearly one that
has been “made alive” through Christ—the gravestone iconographically
invokes biblical prophecy and folds the Puritan individual into its
scriptural schema.
QUESTIONS
Comprehension: How does Rowlandson’s Narrative understand her
captivity as typologically significant both for herself as an individual
and for her community as a whole? Does Rowlandson’s need to
understand her experience on two levels create tensions within the
text? If so, how?
Comprehension: How would you interpret the Eliakim Hayden gravestone
typologically? What do the images carved on the stone mean?
What do you think the images that look like eyes at the top of the
stone represent? How do the images relate to the rhymed aphorism
in the epitaph?
Comprehension: How does John Winthrop use typological interpretations
of current events to political ends? How do the typological
interpretations in the “Model of Christian Charity” compare to his
typological understanding of Anne Hutchinson seven years later?
Do the motivations behind his typologizing change over time?
Context: Read Edward Taylor’s “Meditation 8.” How does Taylor join
the Old Testament type of “manna” with the New Testament antitype
of Christ as the bread of life? How does a typological reading
change the significance of the homely metaphor of bread and bread
baking in this poem?