|
Unit 2 The Literature of Colonial America (1620-1700) l Key Words: Colonial American Literature, Puritans, Puritanism, New England Literature, Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor l Target: This opening unit aims at providing a general introduction to this course: the definition, functions, etc.; telling the students how to learn this course and lastly establishing an outline of American literature. l Study Points: 1. Native American Literature 2. Idiosyncratic Features of American Literature; 3. Colonial American Literature 4. Early New England Literature 1. Native American Literature Generally speaking, American Indian literature undergoes three stages of development: traditional, transitional, and modern. 1) Traditional Literature Transmitted by word of mouth (oral literature) among Indians: sacred stories, folktales, and songs as part of the rituals of annual festivals, tribal traditions, and narrative accounts of gods and heroes. 2) Transitional Literature Represented by translations of the great Indian orators of the 19th century and memories of the Indian experience in relation to white dominance. 3) Modern Literature The modern literature includes novels, short stories, and poetry written in English by native Americans of the 19th and 20th centuries, most of whom speak no other language. As narrative American writers view injustice, violence, and despair as force that influence native American life, they explore both their rich heritage and their tragic loss of identity as they find themselves trapped between a culture that is vanishing and a culture that for them is not yet fully available. Hence their literature forms a unique and significant part of American literature. 2. Colonial Literature ◆ Idiosyncratic Features of American Literature a. During the colonial period, the purpose of literary works, if there’s any, only serves to instruct, in two ways. — one is to guide the immigrants through spiritual haze. — the other being to guide them or rather to help them out of practical difficulties: l practical matters and highly theoretical, polemical, discussion of religious questions. The first settlers as the first writers l the first American writings: — the narratives and journals of these settlements, — about their voyage to the new land — about adapting themselves to unfamiliar climates and crops — about dealing with Indians, about the land stretching before them. Captain John Smithl the first American writer (The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, 1624) l among the members who established the first permanent English settlement, that is, Jamestown in 1607 l gave New England its name l made excellent maps b. The development of North American Literature reversed the history of every other national literature. Instead of beginning with fork tales and songs it began with abstractions and proceeded from philosophy to fiction. c. Individualism: the accounts of personal experience, the unusually self-conscious and explicit manner, are the signs of individualism. Aristocracy had made a chain of all the members of a community from the peasant to the king; democracy breaks that chain, and severs every link of it. It is the new importance given to the single person l The pervasive sense of individualism showed itself in the early literature in many different and even contradictory forms, ranging from the self-reliant pragmatism of Benjamin Franklin to the no less self-reliant idealism of the Transcendentalists, from the morbid romanticism of Poe to the troubled psychological analyses of Hawthorne and the desperate metaphysical probings of Melville. l The four writers who first developed and represented three major stains of individualism in American literature—pragmatic, romantic and transcendental individualism—were respectively Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) with his close associate Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). 3. Early New England Literature New England had from the beginning a literature of ideas: theological, moral, historical, and political. The Puritans had come to the New World for the sake of religious freedom. They were either Englishmen or people who wanted to have an entirely new church. These two groups combined, especially in what become Massachusetts, came to be known as Puritans, so named after those who wished to purify the Church of England. Over the years the Puritans built a way of life that was in harmony with their somber religion, one that stressed hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety. These ideas dominated much of the earliest American writing, including the sermons, books, and letters of John Cotton and Cotton Mather, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, the best of Puritan poets. Literature of Ideas l theological l moral l historical l political Puritansl come to the New World for the sake of religious freedom. l Englishmen or people who wanted to have an entirely new church. l known as “Puritans”, — who wished to “purify” the Church of England. Puritan Way of Lifel a way of life that was in harmony with their somber religion l stressed hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety. l These ideas dominated much of the earliest American writing, including the sermons, books, and letters of John Cotton, Cotton, Mather, William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, the best of Puritan poets. ◆ Puritanism Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. The Puritans were originally members of the division of the Protestant Church, who came into existence in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I. The first settlers were quite a few of them Puritans. They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. The Puritans wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from god. As a culture heritage, Puritanism did have a profound influence on the early American mind. American Puritanism also had an enduring influence on American literature. It had become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, so much a part of the national cultural atmosphere, rather than a set of tenets. Anne Bradstreet, the First American Poetl Born in Northampton, England, 1612 l sailed to Boston with her father and her husband, 1630 l The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, 1650 — the first volume of poems published by an American — one of the first volumes of poetry in English written by a woman — poems of simple style on private matters expressing her Puritan belief that one must not become too attached to things of this world To My Dear and Loving Husband If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I Prize thy love more than whole mines of gold Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense. Thy love is such I can no way repay, The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. Then while we live, in love let’s so persevere That when we live no more, we may live ever. Edward Taylor, The Best Puritan Poet l came to Boston in 1668 l attended Harvard and post as a minister upon graduation l wrote a great deal, but not published until 200 years later l poems of powerful and original imagination testify the intensity of Puritan religious life in wilderness America l conveys spiritual meaning through images of everyday life l in the direct line of the English devotional metaphysical poets Reference Books: q Chang Yaoxin: A Survey of American Literature, the 2nd edition. Tianjin: Nankai University Press, 2003.12 q Liu Cunbo: Selected Readings in British and American Literature, Beijing: Higher Education Press, 2001 q 李翠葶，李正栓：《美国文学学习指南》，北京：清华大学出版社，2002 q 吴定柏：《美国文学大纲》，上海：上海外语教育出版社，1998
||
Learning Zone |