From Sacred to Secular

This volume examines the illustrations in early American books, pamphlets, magazines, almanacs, and broadsides, providing a look into the social, cultural, and political environment of the late colonial period and the early republic. American printers and engravers drew upon a rich tradition of Christian visual imagery. Used first to inculcate Protestant doctrines, regional symbolism later served to promote reverence for the new republic. The author includes information on "memento mori" imagery, children's readers, visionary literature, and illustrated Bibles. One chapter shows the demonization of the Indians even as the Indian was being adopted as a symbol of America. Other chapters deal with propaganda for the American Revolution, canonization of leaders, secularized roles for women, and socialization of sites in the new nation. Throughout, analysis of image and text shows how the religious and the secular contrasted, coexisted, and intermingled in eighteenth-century American illustrated imprints. "From Sacred to Secular: Visual Images in Early American Publications is an interdisciplinary study of eighteenth-century American culture based on the evidence of illustrated books, magazines, pamphlets, almanacs, and broadsides. It uses the illustrated publications as material artifacts to be studied for what they tell of a society's values, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions. It employs the literature of a variety of fields, including history, art history, literature, religion, and the growing scholarship on the history of the book, thus bridging the gap between disciplines. The present study is unusual because it concentrates on the illustrations, restoring little-known images to the modern viewer, and explores the meanings of an image situated in a text."--Jacket.