美国文学史

Three major poets in colonial period:
1.
Anne Bradstreet
2.
3.
Michael Wigglesworth
Edward Taylor
1. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

the first noted poetess in colonial period
2.Anne Bradstreet’s Life
* She was born and educated in England.
* At the age of 18, she came to America in 1630 with her father and husband. * She had 8 children. * She became known as the “Tenth Muse” who appeared in America.
1.
2.
They were servants of God.---Puritan poets
They faithfully imitated and transplanted English literary traditions.---In English style They served either God or colonial expansion or both.
Features of Colonial Poets

American literature grew out of humble origins. Diaries, histories, journals, letters, commonplace books, travel books, sermons, in short, personal literature in its various forms, occupy a major position in the literature of the early colonial period.
Colonial Period (1607-1775)
II.Overview of the literature1.

types of writingdiaries, histories,

journals, letters, travel autobiographies/biographies, sermons2.
Chapter 1
Conolianl America

I.
Background: Puritanism

II.
Overview of the literature
I.
Background: Puritanism
They follow the ideas of the Swiss reformer John Calvin.

3 ) Actually it is a code of values, a philosophy of life and a point of view in American minds, also a two-faceted tradition of religious idealism and level-headed common sense.

1. features of Puritanism

(1)Predestination: God decided everything before things occurred.
(2)Original sin: Human beings were born to be evil, and this original sin can be passed down from generation to generation. (3)Total depravity
1)
Simply speaking, American Puritanism just refers to the spirit and ideal of puritans who settled in the North American continent in the early part of the seventeenth century because of religious persecutions. In content it means scrupulous moral rigor, especially hostility to social pleasures and indulgences, that is strictness,sternness and austerity in conduct and religion.

Smit with those chams,that must decay,


I grieve to see your future doom;
They died--nor were those flowers more gay, The flowers that did in Eden bloom; Unpitying frosts,and Autumn's power Shall leave no vestige of this flower.

From morning suns and evening dews


At first thy little being came:
If nothing once,you nothing lose, For when you die you are the same; The space between,is but an hour, The frail duration of flower.
1.
Anne Bradstreet’s Works
“Some verses on the Burning of Our House” “The Spirit and the Flesh”
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (the first collection published by English colonists living in America)

(4)With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible.
Why did Puritans come to America?
- to reform the Church of England - to have an entirely new church - to escape religious persecution * God’s chosen people * To seek a new Garden of Eden * To build “City of God on earth”
3.
The Wild Honey Suckle
by Philip Freneau

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,


Hid in this silent,dull retreat,
Untouched thy honeyed blossoms blow, Unseen thy little branches greet: No roving foot shall crush thee here, No busy hand provoke a tear.


(3)Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American.
2) With time passing it became a dominant factor in American life, one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American Literature. To some extent it is a state of mind, a part of the national cultural atmosphere that the American breathes, rather than a set of tenets.


By Nature's self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun the vulger eye, And planted here the guardian shade, And sent soft waters murmuring by; Thus quietly thy summer goes, Thy days declining to repose.



(4)Limited atonement: Only the “elect” can be saved.

2.Influence

(1)A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced American literature. (2)It led to the everlasting myth. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden.
writers of colonial period
books,
ቤተ መጻሕፍቲ ባይዱ



(1) Anne Bradstreet
(2) Edward Taylor (3) Roger Williams (4) John Woolman (5) Thomas Paine (6) Philip Freneau

The poem was written in regular 6-line tetrameter stanzas,rhyming:ababcc .The structure of the poem is regular,so it has the neoclassic quality of proportion and balance. Alliteration ,assonance,masculine rhyme used in the poem also produce musical or melodious and harmonious,which matches the beautyof the flower,the beauty of poem is partly ambodied in the effects created through changes in the rhythm. The poem contains iambics trochaics and spondee. The arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables suggests the transience of the life of the flower and the poet's emotional change.the poem is full of sensuous images such as fair flower visual image,comely grow kinasthetic image and honeyed blossoms olfactory image.All the images make us feel pity for the beautiful flower which has only a short life. The line"the sapace is but an hour"contains a hyperbole stressing and transience of life. The tone of the poem is both sentimental and optimistic.