SOURCE: Arner, Robert D. “Pastoral Celebration and Satire in Thomas Morton's New English Canaan.” Criticism XVI, No. 3 (Summer 1974): 217-31.

In the following essay, Arner contends that the form of New English Canaan is based on festive folk rituals which ultimately derive from ancient Greek phallic ceremonies.

Thomas Morton's New English Canaan, a work seldom regarded seriously either by historians or literary critics,¹ is admittedly a troublesome book. As history, it is too literary for historians to trust; Morton's prejudices against the American Pilgrims and Puritans generate much of the wit, irony, and vivid imagery of the volume, particularly in the third section, but they also lead the author to invent episodes, distort chronology, and qualify the reliability of his narrative in a variety of other ways. As literature, on the other hand, the book presents a different set of problems. It is, to begin with, a literary hybrid...