| Summary: | Atlantic networks of Protestant and Jesuit letters fueled missionary linguistic activity in North America in the 1660s and 1670s, which influenced early modern debates about the representational power of words. A fragmented theological and philosophical context in Europe put pressure on New World missionaries to try to salvage mystical ideas about the representational power of words. Espousing the idea that Algonquian could be redeemed along with the souls of its speakers, missionaries John Eliot in New England and Chrétien Le Clercq in Nova Scotia transformed the New World into language laboratories, in which theological aspirations for Algonquian translation came into conflict with the practical and material reality of learning and proselytizing in Wampanoag and Mi’kmaq. Missionary linguistics revealed language to be socially and culturally contextual rather than universal, and signs to be material rather than metaphysical, thus forcing North American missionaries in dialogue with Enlightenment ideas about language.
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