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Article: The myth of New England
- Article from:
- Humanities
- Article date:
- July 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Superintendent of Documents Jul/Aug 1999. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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NEW ENGLAND would seem to be the perfect American region. Its history is long, and mostly it is proud. As early as 1614, even before the place was settled by Puritans, Captain John Smith gave New England its name, and his term quickly took hold. For two centuries the boundaries of New England have been quite clearly defined: six contiguous states, five of them among the smallest in the notion. (Try to define the boundaries of "the South," or "the West," or any other region of the United States, and such precision withers away.) Even in terms of scale, New England is the tidiest of regions, conveying a sense of intimate villages and farms nestled among cragless hills, populated perhaps by ...