Puritanism was a youthful, vigorous movement.

The secularization of Western culture was accompanied by the elevation of art to the position of a substitute religion to replace Christianity.

Literature takes reality and human experience as its starting point, transforms it by means of the imagination, and sends readers back to life with renewed understanding of it and zest for it because of their excursions into a purely imaginary realm.

William Perkins said, “The end of a man’s calling is not to gather riches for himself…but to serve God in the serving of man, and in the seeking the good of all men.

The Puritans' sense of priorities in life was one of their greatest strengths. Putting God first and valuing everything else in relation to God was a recurrent Puritan theme.

Stressing the God-centered life can lead to an otherworldly withdrawal from everyday earthly life.

Literature incarnates its meanings as concretely as possible. The knowledge that literature gives of a subject is the kind of knowledge that is obtained by (vicariously) living through an experience.