第2章　殖民时期的美国文学：1620-1763

Questions for Discussion and Writing Assignments

1With the help of a map, identify the states that made up the Northern colonies, the Southern colonies and the Middle colonies.

Key: According to the map, the Northern colonies include Massachusetts Territory, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut; the Southern colonies include Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia; the Middle colonies include New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

2Where did the early settlers come from? And what were their different purposes of coming to America?

Key: The early settlers came not only from all parts of England but also from Africa, from the Scottish Highlands, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland and other regions in Europe. While some of the settlers came in response to economic forces, others came in pursuit of political and religious freedom. Africans were forced to come as slaves.

3What have you learned about the Puritans and their culture? More specifically, can you describe in detail the Puritan beliefs?

Key: In 1543, under the rule of King Henry VIII, the Church of England was formed. The Church of England was a Protestant national church independent of the Pope and Roman Catholicism. Since the British monarch then controlled the church, British citizens were required to follow the rules and practices of the Church. Those who were religiously non-conforming to this established authority were called “Puritans”, a name which suggests their determination to build a church as pure as possible, in contrast to the perceived corruption of the Church of England. The term “Puritan” was first applied to those Protestant reformers who rejected Queen Elizabeth’s religious settlements of 1560 because they were determined to “purify” their religion. In the 1600s they left England to seek God’s way in the “desert wilderness” of the New World. For fear that their identity might be compromised; they set sail on the Mayflower on September 16, 1620. They faced a hard life initially in America. Part of the Puritan culture was quite negative, as was evident in their watchdog mentality which encouraged neighbors to spy on other neighbors.

Puritan pilgrims spoke of their doctrine in terms of two “covenants.” The first covenant was supposedly made between God and Adam, according to which Adam was to enjoy eternal happiness in the Garden of Eden on the condition that he should completely obey God. Tasting the apple from the forbidden tree of knowledge meant that Adam committed the “original sin” or broke the first covenant. Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden to toil in the world forever. Later, God made a second covenant with Abraham and promised to save his children unconditionally. The Puritans believed that they were descendants of Abraham: they were the “elect” group redeemed by the suffering of Jesus Christ and chosen to receive God’s “grace,” The experience of saving grace, in the belief of the Puritans, is an agonizing process of the soul coming into consciousness of its sin and worthlessness. It might be said that the need to examine one’s inner life as the experience of saving grace is at the heart of Puritan colonial literature. Thus, “original sin” and “grace” are two most important premises in Puritanism. They believed that the final events of earthly time were coming to a close and these events matched the symbols in the Revelation. Thus, biblical symbols became their guidance for understanding the past and the future.

4What are some of the characteristics of Puritan writing?

Key: The individual Puritan was encouraged to write a lot: a diary was seen as a useful genre for self-examination; sermons were regarded as a superior form; a “plain style” was seen to be consistent with their goal in religious purification.

Among the Puritans, the Geneva Bible, because of its plainer language, was preferred to the King James Version.

Puritan writers wrote not only to reflect their beliefs but also to reflect on the hardships the earlier settlers faced.

Moreover, they wrote to an English audience to justify their American innovations. Their writings, therefore, often followed English stylistic models.

5Having read through the entire chapter, why do you think it is important to identify the different cultural trends in Puritan literature? What are these trends?

Key: Because it can help us know more about the origin and source of Puritan literature.

6Why is William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation so important to Puritan literature? What were the circumstances under which it was written and received?

Key: Because William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation is a compelling account of the Puritan Pilgrims in the tiny but famous colony Plymouth, a large volume of writings in the colonial period record the experience of far less radical Puritan immigrants.

He began wrote Of Plymouth Plantation in 1630, but the completed version was first published 200 years later, in 1856.

7Who delivered the sermon titled “Model of Christian Charity?” Why is it important to Puritan literature?

Key: John Winthrop delivered the sermon titled “Model of Christian Charity”. Because it was in this classic sermon, “Model of Christian Charity,” that Winthrop put forward a plan for the “City upon a Hill”, which was the American dream for the Puritans at that time. The sermon may be called a lay-sermon since it includes both secular and religious appeals and elements.

8With two examples, discuss the role of the speaker in Anne Bradstreet’s “domestic poems.” What, if any, are the Puritan elements in such poems?

Key: Anne’s “domestic poems” are today recognized as her best literary achievement. In them, she conveyed her personal feelings for New England and family life. These expressions of personal feelings also well elucidate Puritan culture. In “To My Dear and Loving Husband” and “A Letter to My Husband,” she expressed her love for Simon, her husband. It reflects the thrifty and loyal housewife of the Puritan culture.

9Read a few of Bradstreet’s poems that show a Puritan consciousness and then compare them to her “domestic poems.” Do you see consistency or contradictions?

Key: Her poems “Contemplations” and “Meditations” show Puritan consciousness. In “Contemplations”, she shows a gratitude for the presence of God’s glory in nature; in “Meditations”, she demonstrates how Puritans search for instructive emblems in nature and daily existence and how a predetermining God comforts Puritans.

Compared with her “domestic poems”, we find that her thoughts in those poems that show a Puritan consciousness mount to a higher level. But, they still share many things in common.

10How does Mary White Rowlandson make her Puritan belief part of her A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson? Compare this Narrative with Captain John Smith’s account of his captivity in The General Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (see Chapter 1). What are the similarities in their attitude towards the Native Americans?

Key: A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is to a large extent the testimony of a Puritan, reassuring the author/ narrator and the readers that God tests them with trials but ultimately redeems them. The “I” narrator quotes the Bible frequently.

By reading their works, we find that both of them characterize the Native Americans as the barbarous other to the Puritans.

11Discuss Edward Taylor’s style carefully by identifying images of the rustic country, the influence of the Bible and his connection with the metaphysical school.

Key: Taylor’s poetic imagery not only shows his familiarity with the Bible—especially the sensuous Song of Songs—but also draws its force and wit from such everyday activities as weaving and bread making. The images of the rustic country that he knew so well from his boyhood and from western Massachusetts makes his poetry wild and enchanting.

To the more discerning eye, Taylor is a poetic talent trained in the metaphysical school of George Herbert, Richard Crashaw and Quarles. His style is one capable of introducing elements of the unexpected into a formal order and structure. It is this style that has earned him the name as the poet of “wilderness baroque.”

12Give your account of the “witch-hunt” in Salem. Then discuss the roles of Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall in this historical farce as recorded by their own writing.

Key: The biggest witchcraft hunting took place in Salem in 1692. That year, Betty Parris, the daughter of a minister, and her cousin Abigail, began to show strange behaviors such as barking, writhing and moaning. They were then diagnosed by a physician to be possessed. A slave in Parris’s house, a West Indian woman named Tituba, confessed that she was ordered by the devil to work for him. For several months, those accused were brought to the trial under Chief Justice Stoughton of Massachusetts and eight other judges. When the colonial governor William Phips finally intervened to put an end to this farce, 19 had been executed and 150 were imprisoned, waiting for trial. Indeed, the mass hysteria of witch-hunt did not end in Salem. It was witnessed again and again in other notorious historical events that continued into our time.

Cotton Mather is often remembered for his role in the persecution of the so-called witches. It is true that he was opposed to the admission of special evidence, but he made no open protest. Mather’s tract titled “Wonders of the Invisible World” establishes a useful context in which the witchcraft trials can be understood. A chapter in Mather’s most important book Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) titled “The Witchcraft Trials in Salem” provides an insider’s account of the event. From a Puritan perspective, Mather described the witches as those “arrested with many preternatural vexations upon their bodies, and a variety of cruel torments, which were evidently in icted from the daemons of the invisible word.” According to Mather, the many manifestations of witchcraft, surrounded in “a fascinating mist of invisibility,” caused not only the hysteria but also the fear that “the devil would get so far into the faith of the people.” It was this fear, on the part of “many persons of great judgment, piety and experience,” that inspired dissatisfaction with the proceedings and eventually ended the trials. Cotton Mather, we have to remember, was part of the defense of this theocracy.

Samuel Sewall was a judge at the Salem trials and later openly recanted his error. The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729 provides, in part, a dally account of the Salem trials and indicates Sewall’s troubled conscience during the process.

13What is Anne Hutchinson remembered for by later generations? What did she do that made her such a figure?

Key: Anne Hutchinson is remembered by later generations as a fighter for religious freedom and women’s rights.

Anne Hutchinson attracted a circle of women and men to her Boston home for discussions of sermons, and soon these meetings turned into a forum for Anne Hutchinson to comment on religious matters. She claimed that she had received revelations from the Holy Spirit which told her that only a few ministers preached the appropriate “covenant of grace” while most ministers promoted the “covenant of works,” misleading people into believing that good conduct would ensure salvation. Hutchinson’s opinion was believed to be provocative.

In 1637, Hutchinson, pregnant again, was brought to the General Court. For two days, she made an eloquent defense for herself, citing chapters and verses.

When banished as “a woman not fit for our society,” Hutchinson walked, with some followers, to Providence and later, to Rhode Island. Hardships on the journey resulted in a still-born baby. It is because her leadership in dissension from orthodox Puritanism that the colony of Rhode Island and Providence later grew to be a refuge for dissenters.

14What is Roger Williams remembered for today? What are some of his representative works?

Key: Williams is remembered not so much for the specifics of his religious radicalism but as an earlier expression of the American ideals of religious freedom and democracy.

The best known work by Williams is The Bloody Tenet of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, Discussed in a Conference between Truth and Peace (1644) and his first and most artistic work is A Key into the Language of America.

15Tell the story of how the fervor of the Great Awakening merged with the Enlightenment thinking in Jonathan Edwards.

Key: Jonathan Edwards was a complex theologian in whom the fervor of the Great Awakening and the thinking of Enlightenment converged, if not coexisted, in contradiction. He played a very important role in the Great Awakening.

Edwards’ Freedom of the Will is a reconciliation of Calvinism and the Enlightenment. In Edwards, the seeming conflicts between the Awakening and the Enlightenment, between the principles of piety and reason, led to similar ends through different paths. It was with both that Edwards succeeded in arousing the millennial hope that America could be the Promised Land where the divine will would be realized.

16William Byrd, Ebnezer Cook and Richard Lewis are writers of the Southern colonies. Do they share anything in their writing that reveal cultural characteristics of the Southern colonies? And how different are they in their subject matters and styles?

Key: They wrote often for utilitarian purposes and they wrote in such forms as journals, poems, letters, and sermons and so on. They often showed a sense of satire and a spirit of exploration inherent in the Renaissance. They were also part of a culture aimed at finding the “vale of plenty” in contrast to the Puritan culture aimed at building the “City upon a Hill.”

William Byrd wrote diaries, letters, and descriptions of personalities. Sharp and pointed satire and subtle irony characterize his writing style. After he made Virginia his permanent home, he devoted much of his attention to American subjects and often, in his letters and diaries, depicted the contrasts between England and America. Ebnezer Cook’s works look into the subtle relationship between English and Americans. He was also good at satirizing. Lewis is a poet who writes of America, especially the wilderness in America, using an English poetic model, the pastoral.

17Discuss the geographical area called the Middle colonies and its cultural diversity. What is the importance of this region as far as the development of American culture is concerned? In this context, do you think that the lives and writings of Thomas Godfrey and John Woolman befit the Middle colonies?

Key: The Middle colonies included New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, land fertilized by three great rivers: the Hudson, Delaware, and Susquehanna.

These colonies are culturally and ethnically more diverse. New York and New Jersey were at first under Dutch colonial rule. Dutch culture and language, along with Dutch Reformed Church, lingered for a while. New York, inheriting the Dutch tradition of tolerance, also included French, Welsh, Jews, Swiss and others. Along the Delaware River, the first settlers were Swedes and Finns, followed by the influx of English and Welsh Quakers, and, later, the Germans and Scots-Irish. Pennsylvania became the haven for the Society of Friends (Quakers) who came because of religious persecution. All of these varied the American culture.

Yes, I think that the lives and writings of Thomas Godfrey and John Woolman befit the Middle colonies. Because that the Quakers in the Middle colonies believed that God is loving; that God reveals his light to individuals directly, not only through nature, churches and the Bible; that everyone is equal before God; and that war, violence and persecution are to be opposed and humanitarianism must be upheld. Godfrey’s The Prince of Parthia reveals of dark passions, manifested often in violent actions, in the ancient and remote kingdom of Parthia. John Woolman gave up trade and devoted his time to his family and to his work as a spokesman for Quakers. His choice to withdraw from the world of commerce is consistent with the Quaker belief that things spiritual within oneself should take precedence over the world of material things and one should live a simple life. Woolman is also known for his humanitarianism. He traveled in the South where he observed the inhuman system of slavery, and that made him an opponent of slavery. Woolman’s protest against slavery also shows characteristics of Quakerism. As to his works, that Woolman’s pure and simple style reflects his beliefs as a Quaker is evident in his Journal.