The Literature of Exploration
The Colonial Period in New England
Literature in the Southern and Middle Colonies
THE LITERATURE OF EXPLORATION
Had history taken a different turn, the United States easily could have been a part of the
great Spanish or French overseas empires. Its present inhabitants might speak Spanish
and form one nation with Mexico, or speak French and be joined with Canadian Francophone
Quebec and Montreal.
Yet the earliest explorers of America were not English, Spanish, or French. The first European
record of exploration in America is in a Scandinavian language. The Old Norse Vinland Saga
recounts how the adventurous Leif Eriksson and a band of wandering Norsemen settled briefly
somewhere on the northeast coast of America—probably Nova Scotia, in Canada—in the first
decade of the 11th century, almost four hundred years before the next recorded European discovery
of the New World.
The first known and sustained contact between the Americas and the rest of the world, however,
began with the famous voyage of an Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, funded by the Spanish
rulers Ferdinand and Isabella. Columbus’s journal in his “Epistola,” printed in 1493, recounts the
trip’s drama—the terror of the men, who feared monsters and thought they might fall off the edge
of the world; the near-mutiny; how Columbus faked the ships’ logs so that the men would not know
how much farther they had traveled than anyone had gone before; and the first sighting of land as
they neared America.
Bartolomé de las Casas is the richest source of information about the early contact between
American Indians and Europeans. As a young priest, he helped to conquer Cuba. He transcribed
Columbus’s journal and, late in life, wrote a long, vivid History of the Indians criticizing their
enslavement by the Spanish.
Initial English attempts at colonization were disastrous. The first colony was set up in 1585 at
Roanoke, off the coast of North Carolina; all its colonists disappeared, and to this day legends are
told about blue-eyed Croatan Indians of the area. The second colony was more permanent:
Jamestown, established in 1607. It endured starvation, brutality, and misrule. However, the
literature of the period paints America in glowing colors as the land of riches and opportunity.
Accounts of the colonizations became world-renowned. The exploration of Roanoke was carefully
recorded by Thomas Hariot in A Briefe and True Report of the New-Found Land of Virginia (1588).
Hariot’s book was quickly translated into Latin, French, and German; the text and pictures were
made into engravings and widely republished for more than two hundred years.
The Jamestown colony’s main record—the writings of Captain John Smith, one of its leaders—
is the exact opposite of Hariot’s accurate, scientific account. Smith was an incurable romantic, and
he seems to have embroidered his adventures. To him we owe the famous story of the Native
American maiden, Pocahontas. Whether fact or fiction, the tale is ingrained in the American
historical imagination. The story recounts how Pocahontas, favorite daughter of Chief Powhatan,
saved Captain Smith’s life when he was a prisoner of the chief. Later, when the English persuaded
Powhatan to give Pocahontas to them as a hostage, her gentleness, intelligence, and beauty
impressed the English, and, in 1614, she married John Rolfe, an
English gentleman. The marriage initiated an eight-year
peace between the colonists and the Native Americans,
ensuring the survival of the struggling new colony.
In the 17th century, pirates, adventurers, and
explorers opened the way to a second wave of
permanent colonists, bringing their wives,
children, farm implements, and craftsmen’s
tools. The early literature of exploration,
made up of diaries, letters, travel journals,
ships’ logs, and reports to the explorers’
financial backers—European rulers or, in
mercantile England and Holland, joint
stock companies—gradually was
supplanted by records of the settled
colonies. Because England eventually took
possession of the North American colonies,
the best-known and most-anthologized
colonial literature is English. As minority
literature in the United States continues to
flower in the 21st century and American life
becomes increasingly multicultural, scholars are
rediscovering the importance of the continent’s
mixed ethnic heritage. Although the story of
literature now turns to the English accounts, it is
important to remember the richly cosmopolitan
beginnings of American literature.
1. Generally, the men on board the ship with Columbus seemed to feel
a. thrilled and excited.b. anxious and terrified.c. euphoric and homesick.d. adventurous and militant.
2. In what way did the voyages of explorers play a role in the development of early American
literature? Explain the cultural ramifications of these journeys.
3. The most unsuccessful early colonization attempt was at
a. Jamestown.b. Roanoke.c. Gettysburg.d. Plymouth.
4. Contrast the writing style of Captain John Smith to that of Thomas Hariot.
5. It is not known whether the tale of Pocahontas is based in fact or fiction, but the storyline
has become a permanent part of America’s historical imagination. Why do you think this
happened? Was it something specific about the actual story? Was it politically influenced?
Was it a result of the general atmosphere during the time period? Explain your thoughts.
6. As America becomes increasingly multicultural, literary scholars are paying renewed
attention to the
a. country’s foreign policy.b. history of the country’s mixed heritage.c. use of English as the dominant language in literature.d. role played by the foreign explorers.
7. Trace the progress of the American literary movement from 1493 through to the early 1600s.
Focus on the many sources from which the writing came and try to give a comprehensive
description of its characteristics based on this information.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD IN NEW ENGLAND
It is likely that no other colonists in the history of the world were as intellectual as the
Puritans. Between 1630 and 1690, there were as many university graduates in the
northeastern section of the United States, known as New England, as in the mother country—an
astounding fact when one considers that most educated people of the time were aristocrats who
were unwilling to risk their lives in wilderness conditions. The self-made and often self-educated
Puritans were notable exceptions. They wanted education so that they could understand and
execute God’s will as they established their colonies throughout New England.
The Puritan definition of good writing was that which brought home a full awareness of the
importance of worshiping God and of the spiritual dangers that the soul faced on Earth. Puritans’
writing style varied enormously—from complex metaphysical poetry to homely journals and
crushingly pedantic religious history. Whatever the style or genre, certain themes remained
constant. Life was seen as a test; failure led to eternal damnation and hellfire, and success to
heavenly bliss. This world was an arena of constant battle between the forces of God and the forces
of Satan, a formidable enemy with many disguises. Many Puritans excitedly awaited the
“millennium,” when Jesus would return to Earth, end human misery, and inaugurate one thousand
years of peace and prosperity.
Scholars have long pointed out the link between Puritanism and capitalism. Both rest on
ambition, hard work, and an intense striving for success. Although individual Puritans could not
know, in strict theological terms, whether or not they had been “saved” and were among the elect
who would go to heaven, Puritans tended to feel that earthly success was a sign of election. Wealth
and status were sought not only for themselves, but as welcome reassurances of spiritual health
and promises of eternal life.
Moreover, the concept of stewardship encouraged success. The Puritans interpreted all things
and events as symbols with deeper spiritual meanings, and felt that in advancing their own profit
and their community’s well-being, they were also furthering God’s plans. They did not draw lines
of distinction between the secular and religious spheres; all of life was an expression of the divine
will—this belief later resurfaces in Transcendentalism.
In recording ordinary events to reveal their spiritual meaning, Puritan authors commonly cited
the Bible, chapter and verse. History was a symbolic religious panorama leading to the Puritan
triumph over the New World and to God’s kingdom on Earth.
The first Puritan colonists who settled New England exemplified the seriousness of
Reformation Christianity. Known as the “Pilgrims,” they were a small group of believers who had
migrated from England to Holland—even then known for its religious tolerance—in 1608, during a
time of persecutions.
Like most Puritans, they interpreted the Bible literally. They read and acted on the text of the
Second Book of Corinthians—“Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord.”
Despairing of purifying the Church of England from within, “Separatists” formed underground
“covenanted” churches that swore loyalty to the group instead of to the king. Seen as traitors to the
king as well as heretics damned to hell, they were often persecuted. Their separation ultimately
took them to the New World.
1. Among all the varying groups of colonists which, according to the author, was considered the
best educated?
a. Transcendentalistsb. Separatistsc. Quakersd. Puritans
2. Explain Puritan writing. In what ways was it diverse? In what way was it homogenous?
3. Compare the concepts of capitalism and Puritanism. In what ways are they similar
ideologies?.
4. Puritans believed that all of life was
a. a learning experience in preparation for the afterlife.b. an expression of the divine will.c. meant to be used for self-serving purposes.d. based in sin, and it was a person’s responsibility to repent until death.
5. Explain why the small group known as “Pilgrims” eventually left England for the New
World. What were they hoping to find?
6. What social or political dogmas do you think probably had the most profound influence on
American literature? Why?
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
William Bradford (1590–1657)
William Bradford was elected governor of Plymouth in the Massachusetts
Bay Colony shortly after the Separatists landed. He was a deeply pious, selfeducated
man who had learned several languages, including Hebrew, in order to
“see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in their native beauty.” His
participation in both the migration to Holland and the Mayflower voyage to
Plymouth, along with his duties as governor, made him ideally suited to be the
first historian of his colony. His history, Of Plymouth Plantation (1651), is a clear
and compelling account of the colony’s beginning. His description of the first view
of America is justly famous:
Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles . . . they had now nofriends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather-beatenbodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor . . . savagebarbarians . . . were readier to fill their sides with arrows than otherwise. And for the reasonit was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp andviolent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms . . . all stand upon them with a weather-beatenface, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue.
Bradford also recorded the first document of colonial self-governance in the English New World,
the “Mayflower Compact,” drawn up while the Pilgrims were still on board the ship. The Mayflower
Compact was a harbinger of the Declaration of Independence, which would come a century and a
half later.
Puritans disapproved of such secular (non-religious) amusements as dancing and card-playing,
which they felt were associated with ungodly aristocrats and immoral living. Reading or writing
“light” literature also fell into this banned category. Puritan minds poured their tremendous
energies into nonfiction and pious genres: poetry, sermons, theological tracts, and histories. Their
intimate diaries and meditations record the rich inner lives of this introspective and intense people.
Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612–1672)
The first published book of poems by an American was also the first U.S. book to be published
by a woman—Anne Bradstreet. It is not surprising that the book was published in England, given
the lack of printing presses in the early years of the first American colonies. Born and educated in
England, Anne Bradstreet was the daughter of an earl’s estate manager. She emigrated with her
family when she was eighteen years old. Her husband eventually became governor of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, where the great city of Boston later grew. She herself preferred her
long, religious poems on conventional subjects such as the seasons, but contemporary readers most
enjoy the witty poems on subjects from daily life and her warm and loving poems to her husband
and children. She was inspired by English metaphysical poetry, and her book The Tenth Muse
Lately Sprung Up in America (1650) shows the influence of Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, and
other English poets. She often uses elaborate conceits or extended metaphors. “To My Dear and
Loving Husband” (1678) uses the Eastern imagery, love theme, and idea of comparison popular in
Europe at the time, but gives these a pious meaning at the poem’s conclusion:
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 persevereThat when we live no more, we may live ever.
Edward Taylor (c. 1644–1729)
Like Anne Bradstreet and, in fact, like all of New England’s first writers, the intense, brilliant
poet and minister Edward Taylor was born in England. The son of a yeoman farmer—an
independent farmer who owned his own land—Taylor was a teacher who sailed to New England in
1668 rather than take an oath of loyalty to the Church of England. He studied at Harvard College
and, like most Harvard-trained ministers, knew Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. A selfless and pious
man, Taylor became a missionary to the settlers when he accepted his lifelong job as a minister in
the frontier town of Westfield, Massachusetts, located one hundred sixty kilometers into the thickly
forested, wild interior. Taylor was the best-educated man in the area, and he put his knowledge to
use, working as the town minister, doctor, and civic leader.
Modest, pious, and hardworking, Taylor never published his poetry, which was only discovered
in the 1930s. He would, no doubt, have seen his work’s discovery as divine providence; today’s
readers should be grateful to have his poems—the finest examples of 17th-century poetry in North
America.
Taylor wrote a variety of verse: funeral elegies, lyrics, a medieval “debate,” and a 500-page
Metrical History of Christianity (mainly a history of martyrs). His best works, according to modern
critics, are the series of short Preparatory Meditations.
Michael Wigglesworth (1631–1705)
Michael Wigglesworth, like Edward Taylor an English-born, Harvard-educated Puritan
minister who practiced medicine, is the third New England colonial poet of note. He continues the
Puritan themes in his best-known work, The Day of Doom (1662). A long narrative that often falls
into doggerel, this terrifying popularization of Calvinistic doctrine was the most popular poem of
the colonial period. This first American bestseller is an appalling portrait of damnation to hell in
ballad meter.
It is terrible poetry—but everybody loved it. It fused the fascination of a horror story with the
authority of John Calvin. For more than two centuries, people memorized this long, dreadful
monument to religious terror; children proudly recited it and elders quoted it in everyday speech.
It is not such a leap from the terrible punishments of this poem to the ghastly self-inflicted wound
of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s guilty Puritan minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, in The Scarlet Letter (1850)
or Herman Melville’s crippled Captain Ahab, a New England Faust whose quest for forbidden
knowledge sinks the ship of American humanity in Moby-Dick (1851). (Moby-Dick was 20th-centuryAmerican novelist William Faulkner’s favorite novel; his profound and disturbing works suggest that the dark, metaphysical vision of Protestant America has not yet been exhausted.)
Like most colonial literature, the poems of early New England imitated the form and technique
of the mother country, although the religious passion and frequent biblical references, as well as
the new setting, gave New England writing a special identity. Isolated New World writers also lived
before the advent of rapid transportation and electronic communications. As a result, colonial
writers were imitating writing that had already become out of date in England. Thus, Edward
Taylor, the best American poet of his day, wrote metaphysical poetry after it was no longer
fashionable in England. At times, as in Taylor’s poetry, rich works of striking originality grew out
of colonial isolation.
Colonial writers often seemed ignorant of such great English authors as Ben Jonson. Some
colonial writers rejected English poets who belonged to different sects as well, thereby cutting
themselves off from the finest lyric and dramatic models the English language had produced. In
addition, many colonials remained ignorant due to the lack of books.
The great model of writing, belief, and conduct was the Bible, in an authorized English
translation that was already outdated when it came out. The age of the Bible, so much older than
the Roman church, made it authoritative to Puritan eyes.
New England Puritans clung to the tales of the Jews in the Old Testament, believing that they,
like the Jews, were persecuted for their faith, that they knew the one true God, and that they were
the chosen elect who would establish the New Jerusalem—a heaven on Earth. The Puritans were
aware of the parallels between the ancient Jews of the Old Testament and themselves. Moses led
the Israelites out of captivity from Egypt, parted the Red Sea through God’s miraculous assistance
so that his people could escape, and received the divine law in the form of the Ten Commandments.
Like Moses, Puritan leaders felt they were rescuing their people from spiritual corruption in
England, passing miraculously over a wild sea with God’s aid, and fashioning new laws and new
forms of government after God’s wishes.
Colonial worlds tend to be archaic, and New England certainly was no exception. New England
Puritans were archaic by choice, conviction, and circumstance.
Samuel Sewall (1652–1730)
Easier to read than the highly religious poetry full of Biblical references are the historical and
secular accounts that tell of real events using lively details. Governor John Winthrop’s Journal
(1790) provides the best information on the early Massachusetts Bay Colony and Puritan political
theory.
Samuel Sewall’s Diary, which records the years from 1674 to 1729, is lively and engaging.
Sewall fits the pattern of the early New England writers that we have seen in Bradford and Taylor.
Born in England, Sewall had been brought to the colonies at an early age. He made his home in the
Boston area, where he graduated from Harvard, and made a career of legal, administrative, and
religious work.
Sewall had been born late enough to see the change from the early, strict religious life of the
Puritans to the later, more worldly Yankee period of mercantile wealth in the New England
colonies; his Diary, which is often compared to Samuel Pepys’s English diary of the same period,
inadvertently records the transition.
Like Pepys’s diary, Sewall’s is a minute record of his daily life, reflecting his interest in living
piously and well. He notes little purchases of sweets for a woman he was courting, and their
disagreements over whether or not he should affect such aristocratic and expensive ways as
wearing a wig and using a coach.
Mary Rowlandson (c. 1635–c. 1678)
The earliest woman prose writer of note is
Mary Rowlandson, a minister’s wife who gives a
clear, moving account of her 11-week captivity by
Native Americans during a massacre in 1676. The
book, a captivity narrative, undoubtedly fanned
the flame of anti–Native American sentiment, as
did John Williams’s The Redeemed Captive (1707),
describing his two years in captivity by French
and Indians after a massacre. Such writings as
women produced are usually domestic accounts
requiring no special education. It may be argued
that women’s literature benefits from its homey
realism and common-sense wit; certainly works
like Sarah Kemble Knight’s lively Journal
(published posthumously in 1825) of a daring solo
trip in 1704—from Boston to New York and back—
escapes the baroque complexity of much Puritan
writing.
Cotton Mather (1663–1728)
No account of New England colonial literature
would be complete without mentioning Cotton
Mather, the master pedant. The third in the fourgeneration
Mather dynasty of Massachusetts Bay,
he wrote at length about New England in over five
hundred books and pamphlets. Mather’s 1702
Magnalia Christi Americana (Ecclesiastical
History of New England), his most ambitious work, exhaustively chronicles the settlement of New
England through a series of biographies. The huge book presents the holy Puritan errand into the
wilderness to establish God’s kingdom; its structure is a
narrative progression of representative American “Saints’
Lives.” His zeal somewhat redeems his pompousness: “I write
the wonders of the Christian religion, flying from the
deprivations of Europe to the American strand.”
Roger Williams (c. 1603–1683)
As the 1600s wore on into the 1700s, religious dogmatism
gradually dwindled, despite sporadic, harsh Puritan efforts to
stem the tide of tolerance. The minister Roger Williams
suffered for his own views on religion. An English-born son of
a tailor, he had been banished from Massachusetts in the
middle of New England’s ferocious winter of 1635. Secretly
warned by Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts,
Williams survived only by living with Native Americans; in
1636, he established a new colony at Rhode Island that would
welcome persons of different religions.
A graduate of Cambridge University (England), Williams retained sympathy for working people
and diverse views. His ideas were ahead of his time. He was an early critic of imperialism, insisting
that European kings had no right to grant land charters because American land belonged to the
Native Americans. Williams also believed in the separation between church and state—still a
fundamental principle in America today. He held that the law courts should not have the power to
punish people for religious reasons—a stand that undermined the strict New England theocracies.
A believer in equality and democracy, he was a lifelong friend of the Native Americans. Williams’s
numerous books include one of the first phrase books of Native American languages, A Key Into the
Languages of America (1643). The book is also an embryonic ethnography, giving bold descriptions
of Native American life based on the time he had lived among the tribes. Each chapter is devoted
to one topic, e.g., eating and mealtime. Native American words and phrases pertaining to this topic
are mixed with comments, anecdotes, and a concluding poem. The end of the first chapter reads:
If nature’s sons, both wild and tame,
Humane and courteous be,
How ill becomes it sons of God
To want humanity.
In the chapter on words about entertainment, he comments that “it is a strange truth that a
man shall generally find more free entertainment and refreshing among these barbarians, than
amongst thousands that call themselves Christians.”
Williams’s life is uniquely inspiring. On a visit to England during the bloody Civil War there, he
drew upon his survival in frigid New England to organize firewood deliveries to the poor of London
during the winter after their supply of coal had been cut off. He wrote lively defenses of religious
toleration not only for different Christian sects, but also for non-Christians. “It is the will and
command of God, that . . . a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Antichristian
consciences and worships, be granted to all men, in all nations . . . ,” he wrote in The Bloody Tenet
of Persecution for Cause of Conscience (1644). The intercultural experience of living among gracious
and humane Native Americans undoubtedly accounts for much of his wisdom.
Influence went two ways in the colonies. For example, John Eliot translated the Bible into
Narragansett. Some Native Americans converted to Christianity. Even today, the Native American
church is a mixture of Christianity and traditional Native American beliefs.
The spirit of toleration and religious freedom that gradually grew in the American colonies had
first been established in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, home of the Quakers. The humane and
tolerant Quakers, or “Friends,” as they were known, believed in the sacredness of the individual
conscience as the fountainhead of social order and morality. The fundamental Quaker belief in
universal love and brotherhood made them deeply democratic and opposed to dogmatic religious
authority. Driven out of strict Massachusetts, which feared their influence, they established a very
successful colony, Pennsylvania, under William Penn in 1681.
John Woolman (1720–1772)
The best-known Quaker work is the long Journal (1774) of John Woolman, documenting his
inner life in a pure, heartfelt style of great sweetness that has drawn praise from many American
and English writers. This remarkable man left his comfortable home in town to sojourn with the
Native Americans in the wild interior because he thought he might learn from them and share their
ideas. He writes simply of his desire to “feel and understand their life, and the Spirit they live in.”
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 14
Woolman’s justice-loving spirit naturally turns to social criticism: “I perceived that many white
People do often sell Rum to the Indians, which, I believe, is a great Evil.”
Woolman was also one of the first antislavery writers, publishing two essays, “Some
Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes,” in 1754 and 1762. An ardent humanitarian, he followed
a path of “passive obedience” to authorities and laws he found unjust, prefiguring Henry David
Thoreau’s celebrated essay, “Civil Disobedience” (1849), by generations.
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758)
The antithesis of John Woolman is Jonathan Edwards, who was born only 17 years before the
Quaker notable. Woolman had little formal schooling; Edwards was highly educated. Woolman
followed his inner light; Edwards was devoted to the law and
authority. Both men were fine writers, but they reveal opposite
poles of the colonial religious experience.
Edwards had been molded by his extreme sense of duty and
by the rigid Puritan environment, which conspired to push him
to defend strict and gloomy Calvinism from the forces of
liberalism springing up around him. He is best known for his
frightening, powerful sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God” (1741):
[I]f God should let you go, you would immediately sink, and
sinfully descend, and plunge into the bottomless gulf. . . . The
God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a
spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and
is dreadfully provoked. . . . he looks upon you as worthy of
nothing else but to be cast into the bottomless gulf.
Edwards’s sermons had enormous impact, sending whole
congregations into hysterical fits of weeping. In the long run,
though, their grotesque harshness alienated people from the
Calvinism that Edwards valiantly defended. Edwards’s
dogmatic, medieval sermons no longer fit the experiences of relatively peaceful, prosperous 18thcentury
colonists. After Edwards, fresh, liberal currents of tolerance gathered force.
1. William Bradford learned Hebrew in order to
a. embrace his Jewish heritage.
b. better understand the sacred writings.
c. make himself popular among his Jewish constituents.
d. fight intolerance and discrimination.
2. In his work, Of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford described the Pilgrims’ first impression of the
new land as being
a. welcoming and friendly.
b. infertile and barren.
c. savage and inhospitable.
d. lush, inviting, and desirable.
15 © 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate.
Jonathan Edwards
3. Read the following sentence. From the choices below, choose the word that is closest in
meaning to the word in bold-faced type.
The Mayflower Compact was a harbinger of the Declaration of Independence . . .
a. a duplicate
b. a recreation
c. a forerunner
d. an appendix
4. For which genre of literature was Anne Bradstreet best known? Describe her style.
5. In a brief paragraph, interpret the meaning of “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” written by
Anne Bradstreet.
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate. 16
6. Taylor left his home in England in 1668 rather than stay and
a. be tried for treason.
b. face the difficulties of unemployment.
c. take an oath of loyalty to the Church of England.
d. join in a revolt against the king.
7. Consider what you have read about the Puritans and their beliefs and then try to explain
why Wigglesworth’s narrative, The Day of Doom, was the most popular poem of the time
period.
8. The following line from the text is an example of which of the literary techniques listed
below?
“ . . . whose quest for forbidden knowledge sinks the ship of American humanity in Moby-
Dick.”
a. simileb. hyperbolec. metaphord. alliteration
9. Identify and explain two major factors, of any nature, that influenced the style of early New
England writing.
10. Sewall’s diary inadvertently recorded
a the anti-monarchy sentiment that was prevalent in the colonies.b. the societal transition from a strict Puritan philosophy to a more worldly Yankee one.c. the nexus of America’s entrepreneurial spirit.d. a societal shift from Biblical adherence to a period of agnosticism.
11. Rowlandson’s account of her eleven-week captivity by Native Americans was responsible for
a. making anti–Native American sentiment worse.b. dispelling the rumors of the savagery of the Native Americans.c. generating a female audience for New England literature.d. educating the colonists about the cultural traditions of the Native Americans.
12. Describe the nature of Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana. What was unique about its
structure?
13. Read the following sentence and then choose from below the word or phrase that is closest in
meaning to the word in bold-faced type.
He was an early critic of imperialism, insisting that European kings had no right to grant
land charters because American land belonged to the Native Americans.
a. taxationb. sovereigntyc. territorial expansiond. democracy
14. Based on the following quote by Williams, and on what you have read about him, what can
you say about his belief system? Explain your thoughts in a brief paragraph.
“It is a strange truth that a man shall generally find more free entertainment and refreshing
among these barbarians, than amongst thousands that call themselves Christians.”
15. Explain the ideology of the group known as the Quakers. In your opinion, which
contemporary societal tenet originated with this group?
16. Woolman’s response of “passive obedience” to authorities and to the law groups him,
philosophically, among men like
a. Nathaniel Hawthorne.b. John Locke.c. Henry David Thoreau.d. Abraham Lincoln.
17. A synonym for the word antithesis would be
a. system.b. opposite.c. prejudice.d. parallel.
18. Describe the content of the sermons given by Jonathan Edwards. How were they received by
the people of the time period? Why?
LITERATURE IN THE SOUTHERN AND MIDDLE COLONIES
Pre-revolutionary southern literature was aristocratic and secular, reflecting the dominant
social and economic systems of the southern plantations. Early English immigrants were
drawn to the southern colonies because of economic opportunity rather than for religious freedom.
Although many southerners were poor farmers or tradespeople living not much better than
slaves, the southern literate upper class had been shaped by the classical, Old World ideal of a noble
landed gentry made possible by slavery. The institution released wealthy southern whites from
manual labor, afforded them leisure, and made the dream of an aristocratic life in the American
wilderness possible. The Puritan emphasis on hard work, education, and earnestness was rare—
instead we hear of such pleasures as horseback riding and hunting. The church was the focus of a
genteel social life, and not a forum for minute examinations of conscience.
William Byrd (1674–1744)
Southern culture naturally revolved around the ideal of the
gentleman. A Renaissance man equally good at managing a
farm and reading classical Greek, a gentleman had the power of
a feudal lord.
In his famous 1726 letter to his English friend, Charles
Boyle, Earl of Orrery, William Byrd described the gracious way
of life at his plantation, Westover:
Besides the advantages of pure air, we abound in all kinds ofprovisions without expense (I mean we who have plantations).I have a large family of my own, and my doors are open toeverybody, yet I have no bills to pay, and half-a-crown will restundisturbed in my pockets for many moons altogether.Like one of the patriarchs, I have my flock and herds, mybondmen and bondwomen, and every sort of trade amongst myown servants, so that I live in a kind of independence oneveryone but Providence . . .
William Byrd epitomizes the spirit of the southern colonial
gentry. The heir to 1,040 hectares (about 2,569 acres), which he
enlarged to 7,160 hectares (about 17,692 acres), he was a
merchant, trader, and planter. His library of three thousand six hundred books was the largest in
the south. He was born with a lively intelligence that his father augmented by sending him to
excellent schools in England and Holland. He visited the French Court, became a Fellow of the
Royal Society, and was friendly with some of the leading English writers of his day, particularly
William Wycherley and William Congreve. His London diaries—the opposite of those of the New
England Puritans—are full of fancy dinners, glittering parties, and womanizing, with little
introspective soul-searching.
Byrd is best known today for his lively History of the Dividing Line, a diary of a 1729 trip of
some weeks and 960 kilometers (about 596 miles) into the interior to survey the line dividing the
neighboring colonies of Virginia and North Carolina. The quick impressions that the vast
wilderness, Native Americans, half-savage whites, wild beasts, and every sort of difficulty made on
this civilized gentleman form a uniquely American and very southern book. He ridicules the first
Virginia colonists—“about a hundred men, most of them reprobates of good families”—and jokes
that, at Jamestown, “like true Englishmen, they built a church that cost no more than fifty pounds,
and a tavern that cost five hundred.” William Byrd’s writings are fine examples of the keen interest
southerners took in the material world: the land, Native Americans, plants, animals, and settlers.
Robert Beverley (c. 1673–1722)
Robert Beverley, another wealthy planter and author of The History and Present State of
Virginia (1705, 1722), recorded the history of the Virginia colony in a humane and vigorous style.
Like Byrd, he admired the Native Americans and remarked on the strange European superstitions
about Virginia—for example, the belief “that the country turns all people black who go there.” He
noted the great hospitality of southerners, a trait maintained today.
Humorous satire—a literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony,
derision, or wit—appears frequently in the colonial south. A group of irritated settlers lampooned
Georgia’s philanthropic founder, General James Oglethorpe, in a tract entitled A True and
Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia (1741). They pretended to praise him for keeping them
so poor and overworked that they had to develop “the valuable virtue of humility” and shun “the
anxieties of any further ambition.”
The rowdy, satirical poem “The Sotweed Factor” satirizes the colony of Maryland, where the
author, an Englishman named Ebenezer Cook, had unsuccessfully tried his hand as a tobacco
merchant. Cook exposed the crude ways of the colony with high-spirited humor and accused the
colonists of cheating him. The poem concludes with an exaggerated curse: “May wrath divine then
lay those regions waste / Where no man’s faithful nor a woman chaste.”
In general, the colonial south may fairly be linked with a light, worldly, informative, and
realistic literary tradition. Imitative of English literary fashions, the southerners attained
imaginative heights in witty, precise observations of distinctive New World conditions.
Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa) (c. 1745–c. 1797)
Important black writers like Olaudah Equiano and Jupiter Hammon emerged during the
colonial period. Equiano, an Ibo from Niger (West Africa), was the first black in America to write an
autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the
African (1789). In the book—an early example of the slave narrative genre—Equiano gives an
account of his native land and the horrors and cruelties of his captivity and enslavement in the
West Indies. Equiano, who converted to Christianity, movingly laments his cruel “un-Christian”
treatment by Christians—a sentiment many African Americans would continue to voice in
centuries to come.
Jupiter Hammon (c. 1720–c. 1800)
The black American poet Jupiter Hammon, a slave on Long Island, New York, is remembered
for his religious poems as well as for An Address to the Negroes of the State of New York (1787), in
which he advocated freeing children of slaves instead of condemning them to hereditary slavery. His
poem “An Evening Thought” was the first poem published by a black male in America.
1. Using a list format, identify three characteristics of southern living before the American
Revolution.
2. In what ways did William Byrd epitomize the attitude of the southern colonial gentry? How
did his writing reflect this and portray the differences between this attitude and that of the
Puritans who had come before?
3. Explain how Robert Beverley’s work, A True and Historical Narrative of the Colony of
Georgia, was really a sarcastic attack on Georgia’s founder, James Oglethorpe.
4. Equiano’s work, Gustavus Vassa, the African, was the first example of a genre later known as
a. realistic fiction.b. epic saga.c. modern autobiography.d. slave narrative.
5. In the words about Jupiter Hammon in the passage, “in which he advocated freeing children
of slaves instead of condemning them to hereditary slavery,” the word advocated means
a. discouraged.b. supported.c. generated.d. condemned.
© 2006 Queue, Inc. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate
No comments:
Post a Comment