Part One The Literature of Colonial America

Historical Background

Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer, made a famous voyage in 1492. Afterwards many European settlers came to American continent to escape religious persecution and to build a new Garden of Eden. Finally the first permanent English settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. In the early period, American literature began with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales and lyrics (always songs) of Indian cultures. The Indians also made a contribution to American vocabulary. Some Indian words are still used in everyday American English today such as “canoe,” “tobacco,” “potato,” “moccasin,”“persimmon,” and “totem.”

American Puritanism Puritans was the name given in the 16th century to the more extreme Protestants who thought the English Reformation had not gone far enough. They wanted to purify their national church. In the 17th century many Puritans emigrated to the New World, where they sought to found a holy Commonwealth in New England. Puritanism remained the dominant cultural force in that area into the 19th century. Puritans believed in the doctrine that John Calvin, the great French Theologian preached in Geneva.

● Predestination: God decided everything before it occurred.

● Original sin: Human beings were born to be evil and this original sin can be passed down from generation to generation.

● Total depravity: Man is completely depraved.

● Limited atonement: Only the “selected” can be saved.

Puritans were convinced that human beings were predestined by God before they were born. Some were God’s chosen people while others were predestined to be damned to hell. They also believed that everyone had a calling, which was given by God. The success of one’s work or the prosperity in his calling was the sign of God’s elect. Therefore, working hard and living a moral and thrifty life were their ethics.

It can be safely concluded that without some understanding of Puritanism, there can be no real understanding of America and its literature. Optimistic puritans have exerted a great influence on American literature. The Puritans dreamed of living under a perfect order and worked with indomitable courage and confident hope toward building a new Garden of Eden in America. Fired with such a sense of mission, the Puritans looked at even the worst of life in the face with tremendous optimism.

American Puritanism contributes to the development of symbolism, a widely used technique. To the pious Puritans the physical, phenomenal world was nothing but a symbol of God. Besides, Puritans thought that all the simple objects existing in the world connoted deep meaning.

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.

William Bradford (1590–1657)

William Bradford, who signed the Mayflower Compact while aboard the Mayflower in 1620, was an English leader of the Separatist settlers of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. He was elected to be the Plymouth Colony governor for about thirty years. His journal published as Of Plymouth Plantation describes early settlers’ life from 1621 to 1646. It can be regarded as a retrospective account of his recollections and observations. In this work, Bradford was mainly concerned with the spiritual pursuit of the Plymouth group. More than once he compared the Puritans in Massachusetts to the Israelites led by Moses in the Old Testament. Bradford is also credited as the first civil authority to designate what popular American culture now views as Thanksgiving in the United States.

John Winthrop (1588–1649)

John Winthrop, born into a wealthy Puritan family, once attended Trinity College, Cambridge. Later he worked as a lawyer, but was forced to resign the position due to a crackdown on Nonconformists under King Charles I. Then Winthrop led the first large wave of migrants from England in 1630 and became one of the leading figures in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the first major settlement in New England after Plymouth Colony. He had even served as the governor for twelve years. His writings and vision of the colony as a Puritan “city upon a hill” has exerted a great influence on the government and religion of neighboring colonies. He is now known for A Model of Christian Charity and The History of New England.

Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672)

Anne Bradstreet was the first colonial female poet to be published in the New World. She was both the daughter and the wife of Massachusetts Bay Colony governors. As an accomplished poet, she set a good example for other female writers to follow in an era when women generally tended to family and domestic matters. Through her poetry she eloquently expressed her concerns with Puritans’ religious experience, family life and early settlers’ lives. Bradstreet’s first volume of poetry was published as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America in 1650. Today she is recognized for her Contemplations.

Edward Taylor (1645–1729)

Edward Taylor, born into a nonconformist family in Leicestershire, England, immigrated in 1668 to the Massachusetts Bay Colony after the restoration of the monarchy and the Act of Uniformity under Charles II. Soon she was admitted to Harvard College and upon graduation in 1671 became a pastor and physician at Westfield, on the remote western frontier of Massachusetts, where he remained until his death. Edward Taylor wrote his poetry during the last years of the Puritan theocracy and some are considered the finest poetry written in Colonial America. His poems were concerned with the inner spiritual life of Puritan believers. In his poems, Taylor hoped for a “rebirth” of the “Puritan Way.”