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http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/PLYMOUTH/addison-028.GIF
Readings
Comments on Morton and Winthrop are below
For class on Winthrop, read this shortened version of John O'Sullivan's 1839 essay on Manifest destiny.
Introduction
We begin at the beginning of writing in English in America. We'll start
with our course with a blast from the past -- those fun loving, wild
and crazy Puritans.
The introductions in the textbook to both the period and the writers supply a solid background and should be read.
Confession time. When I took American Lit I, all this colonial literature seemed, well, boring. I was waiting impatiently for Poe and Melville. When I began teaching this material, I was surprised to find myself, well, enjoying the Puritans.
The difference? I'm able to make connections. These Puritans, as the short contemporary readings show, are not as out-dated as they seemed. Oddly, understanding the ideas and ideals that were prevalent some 350 years ago makes it easier to understand the ideas and ideals of many Americans today.
One question that should arise early on is "how is this literature?" We'll be reading some histories, part of a sermon, and sections of an epic poem. Now the poem makes sense in a literature course . . . but a history? A sermon?
The question "how is this literature" leads to another question: just what is literature? Is it only fiction? Or poems? Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature defines literature as "Writings in prose or verse; especially, writings having excellence of form or expression and presenting ideas of permanent or universal interest" and " The body of written works produced in a particular language, country, or age." According to these descriptions, Bradford's history fits the bill. My own definition of literature involves a conscious manipulation of language to achieve a particular effect; this too fits the literature we'll read for this first assignment. Bradford, in his preface to Of Plymouth Plantation, writes that "endeavor[s] to manifest in a plain style, with singular regard unto the simple truth in all things" the "root and rise" of the settlement (qtd. in Ruland 5). This emphasis on a plain style is well suited to the Puritan religious temperament, as seen in John Cotton, an early Puritan minister and writer, who noted in the preface to the Bay Pslam Book , that "If . . . the verses are not always so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect, let them consider that God's Altar needs not our polishings (Exod. 20) for we have respected rather a plain translation than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase, and so have attended Conscience rather than Elegance, fidelity rather than poetry . . . ." (qtd. Ruland 9).
Now it's time for you to begin exploring the beginnings of literature in America -- and begin to understand just how we came to be Americans.
One caveat: of course, literature, in oral form, was an important aspect of Native American culture. My emphasis in this course, however, is on literature and its connection to the broader outlines of American mainstream culture. As such, the oral tradition, since it wasn't well known until the latter part of the 19th century, doesn't fit our parameters of study. That said, our textbooks supply a fine selection of Native American transcriptions which I encourage you to read.
Works Cited
Ruland, Richard. The Native Muse. New York: Dutton, 1972
Terms and People to Know
Sorry to bombard you with a series of terms, but these will help you
understand the what will seem, at first, like a foreign literature.
Refer back to this list as needed. Review it now, and then take another
look at it after the readings.
Babylon: River that must be crossed to reach the Holy Land. Symbolically, a measure of the difficulty of attaining Canaan.
Calvinism: A stricter form of Protestantism started by John Calvin. Closely related to Puritanism
Canaan: promised land of the Israelites and thus a symbol of the temporal reward/holy land of a persecuted people.
Indentured Servant: A servant "owned" by a master for a set number of years to pay for passage, in America's case, to the New World
Israelites:
Here, a symbol (typology? [see below]) of the plight of the Puritans -
a people persecuted for their religious beliefs, but secure in the
knowledge that they are the "chosen people" of God. They are searching
for their "Holy Land." Link to Desmond Dekker's song "The Israelites."
Jeremiad:
A rhetorical style which preaches hell and damnation because of the
sinfulness of its audience. Usually a sermon, but this could be in a
novel, poem, or other work. It could also be secularized as a more
warning for any kind of dire future because of the
apathy/ignorance/indolence of its audience.
Jerusalem: Used as a symbol of a holy city - which is both hard won and must be defended against infidels
Job:
The Book of Job, from the Old Testament, relates the story of Job, a
man rich in wealth, family and happiness who, through the machinations
of God and Satan, is beset by calamity as a test of his faith. He loses
his money, his children are killed, and his health declines. Though
sorely afflicted (quite literally: his body is encrusted with sores),
he resists the temptation to rail at God and remains faithful. Finally,
after much pain, suffering, and mental anguish is endured, God
acknowledges his faith and relents, bestowing on him twice the riches
he had before.
Pilgrim: In general, a person on a religious journey.
Pre-lapsarian: the world before Adam and Eve bit the apple (before mankind "lapsed" into sin. And Edenic state.
Post-lapsarian: the world after Adam and Eve bit the apple
Providence:
Not a city in Rhode Island, but evidence of God working on the earth.
This could take the form of a bit of good or bad luck or an act of
coincidence.
Typology: A belief that history is predicted in the bible. Thus, a specific action will be ascribed/compared to a biblical occurrence.
Wilderness (in a religious sense): a region where the faithful are alone and afflicted.
Life
See textbook for brief overview of Bradford's amazing life
Total depravity
- "in Adam's Fall we Sinned All." Man is born into sin -- a post
lapsarian state. Pre-lapsarian is before the fall (that apple caused
all kind of problems) -- an Edenic state only attainable by the elected.
Unconditional election - This differs from contemporary Christianity, which emphasizes the joy at the return of the prodigal
son: you can be saved if you convert. In Puritan theology, the hand of
God reaches out and touches people in a way inexplicable for humans. We
don't know why some people are chosen
Limited atonement --
being good ain't enough (in this version, the prodigal son gets shards
and flints). This connects to the idea of the chosen people.
Forgiveness, and thus a ticket into heaven, is limited to a few chosen
people.
Irresistible grace
- Grace is the conductor that needs to stamp your ticket to get into
the pearly gates - but it's up to God to bestow it (humans can't get it
or give it away - see above)
Perseverance of the Saints -
Chosen people need to be obeyed -- and you cannot reject being chosen
because to do so would mean a rejection of god. Remember here that the
saints are not the Catholic saints.
Given their biblical outlook, to a puritan, Satan was an active presence in the world - and Adam's fall was a real event that was still capable of engendering pain and grief.
- Where are their allusions coming from?
- What value system are they inculcating?
- How does the literature connect with the final three contemporary readings?
Bradford
(image from www.pilgrimhall.org/bradjour.htm)
- What is God's providence, according to Bradford ? What do his examples say about the kind of God worshipped by the Puritans? What is both good and bad about this providential world view?
- How does he convey his belief that the Puritans are a "chosen people"?
- Why he emphasizes the hardships of the New World ? How could this connect to religion?
- How does he describe the wilderness? Does it seem welcoming or inhospitable? Which words/passages give shape to his idea of the wilderness?
- Why the short chapter on Bestiality?
- What can you make of the outlines of Puritan religion from this reading?
- Why do they end up leaving the colony?
- What is view of native Americans? How could their religion effect his view of the native Americans?
- How does he describe city life?
- How important is hierarchy to the Puritans?
- Travel literature
- Adventure tale
- Religious narrative -- cf. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress
Bacchanalian: note the beer and wine with the maypole in Chapter XIV 158
Style:
Satire/Irony/Wit. Why were these qualities missing from Bradford?
STYLE AND GENRE. Genre Travel literature – stock conventions:
description of the flora and fauna. A way for people to take a
trip and never leave the farm.
- Where do his allusions come from? (-- look at poem for instance: classical sources) How does this contrast with Bradford?
- What do you make of the tone of his writing – particularly his description of his . . . deportation? (203 uses irony and humor “Captain Shrimp”) elevated diction “jetting most jocundly where they do meet. . .” (198) How does it contrast with Bradford?
- How does his description contrast with Bradford? 198
- How does he describe the origin and purpose of the maypole? How does it contrast with Bradford? (198)
Class
- “The Lady of Learning which they despise, vilifying the two universities with uncivil terms, accounting what is there obtained by study is but . . . “
Nature
- What is his view of nature? SEE HANDOUT in contrast to Bradford, what is missing in his description?
Winthrop
For some background on the centrality of sermons in American thought and life, consider the following comments from an essay by Edward Morgan:
“We can speak of the sermon in the singular, because these sermons, along with the thousands of others from which they have been drawn, are all recognizable as exemplars of a single genre. They all have, in one way or another, the same subject: the goodness of God and his unfulfilled expectations of human beings. They all approach the subject in a hortatory mode, trying to persuade people what to believe and how to behave. They almost all derive their arguments, sometimes by rather circuitous routes, from a verse or set of verses in the Bible. What is most important is that they were all prepared for oral delivery to an assembly of people gathered for the purpose of listening to them. Many, including some in this volume, were written down only by an auditor during their delivery. Some ministers made a point of not knowing what they would say in a sermon before entering the pulpit, and many more spoke only from brief notes. Sermons were more persuasive when they were spontaneous, and persuasion was always their purpose." (Morgan “Persuading the Persuaded”)
“But they were not presented simply as instruction. Even the most didactic are instruments of persuasion. They aim to persuade people who wish to be persuaded, people who, it is safe to assume, enjoyed persuasion, and found in it a fulfillment different from what they could get in church ceremonies alone.” (Morgan “Persuading the Persuaded”)
“While sermons are certainly not unique to American churches, no other people in the Western world has shown so long or so strong an attachment to them. It began with the Puritans, whose sermons occupy nearly a quarter of this volume. Before leaving England they had made a nuisance of themselves by demanding more sermons than the Church was willing to offer. They wanted the Church of England to give up most of the ceremonies prescribed in its Book of Common Prayer and to give up all church officers—bishops, archbishops, and a host of lesser functionaries—except for the parish ministers who preached sermons. When they organized churches of their own in New England, they held all rituals to a minimum in favor of lengthy, cerebral sermons, both morning and afternoon every Sunday. Sermons, they believed, were the instrument of God in conferring the Holy Spirit, and anyone interested in eternal life had better seek maximum exposure to them. The conferring of the spirit was a decisive, once-in-a-lifetime experience, a new birth, a “conversion,” which ceremonies might celebrate but only sermons could bring about and future sermons make intelligible. Later evangelicals attributed the same power to sermons that the Puritans did and made it visible in the way their preaching shook people into strange trances and tremblings at revival meetings. But even among those who believed that God operated on men more quietly, the sermon remained the mode of explaining who He was, what He did, and what people ought to do about it.” (Morgan “Persuading the Persuaded”)
- What do you make of the style/structure of the sermon? Why the Quest., Ans. Objection format? What does this make it seem like?
- What about the use of numbers as structure repeated throughout? What does this convey?
- What does Winthrop emphasize, individuality or community?
- Does he also believe that Puritans are a "chosen" people?
- What do you make of his belief that the Puritan settlement will be a "city on a hill" -- why use this metaphor? Why a hill?
Group Questions #1
For this class, we'll work all together: groups will start for next class
Guidelines on answering questions
Consider the number three:
- Introduce quote
- Insert quote
- Explain how the wording/intent/tone of the quote answers the question.
One aspect of English culture is a money based economy. We see this in The History when Bradford comments “____________” (__). EXPLAIN HOW QUOTE PROVES YOUR POINT. ZERO IN ON A WORD OR TWO TO HELP – OR EXPLAIN THE CONNOTATIONS OF A PHRASE OR IDEA IN YOUR QUOTE.
Group Questions #2
- The critic Myra Jehlen argues that “The space that Bradford does not give in Of Plymouth Plantation to the Indians, he devotes to careful discussions of the emergence of an English culture of the New World" (91). Is this true?
- Alan Howard argues that the American Puritans borrowed much of their ideology from Thomas Hooker’s sermon (early British Puritan) (1659) “The Application of Redemption.”
In this sermon, Howard writes that Hooker believes that “There must be Contrition and Humiliation before the Lord comes to take Possession . . . . This was typified in the passage of the Children of Israel toward the promised Land;"
they must come into, and go through, a vast and a roaring Wilderness, where they must be bruised with many pressures, humbled under many over-bearing difficulties, they were to meet withal before they could possess that good Lord which abounded with all prosperity (qtd. in Howard 249)
How do you see this idea worked out in Bradford and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Winthrop?
- Winthrop establishes the idea of America as a special "city on the hill" in our mythos. In 1839, the editor John O'Sullivan coined the phrase "manifest destiny" to support the idea of continued American expansion -- even at the point of a gun. Reading this shortened version of O'Sullivan's article, find connections or differences between these two American ideals. (longer facsimile of original article).
- Should texts such as History of Plymouth Plantation, New English Canaan, and "A Model of Christian Charity" be included in an American Literature course? Why or why not? Reach a consensus and be ready to argue.
- Is Puritanism -- and thus their literature -- relevant today? Why or why not.
18th century American |
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A page from a New England Primer printed in Boston 1690.  |
Overview on Puritanism
Relgious anteceedents
Chart from Understanding The Scarlet Letter by Claudia Durst Johnson, page 30
Link to Desmond Dekker's song "The Israelites" -- which shows that the Puritans were not the only oppressed group who identified with the israelites.
Hutson, Matthew. "Are Americans Still Puritan?" New York Times. 3 August 2012.
Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860. Wesleyan University Press, 2000.
Consider the following comment by Richard Slotkin, author Regeneration Through Violence Central myths of Christianity "the fall of man, the apocalypse, and divine judgment" and this judgment often involves pain. (Slotkin 101) -- how does this fit into the works we've read for today? Consider also the last paragraph on page 106
"Generally speaking, the basic factors in the physical and psychological situation of the colonists were the wildness of the land, its blending of unmitigated harshness and tremendous potential fertility; the absence of strong European cultures on the boarders; and the eternal presence of the native people in the woods . . . . To these must be added the sense of exile - the psychological anxieties attendant on the tearing up of home roots for wide wandering" (Slotkin 18).
argues that colonial writers "usually had ulterior motives in publishing them [sermons, histories, captivity narratives, etc.] - a desire to explain or justify, through imaginative reconstruction of events, a course of action they had taken or their right to possess the land; or simply an attempt to persuade potential European settlers of the beauties and wealth of the strange new world" (Slotkin 18).
"The
colonies were founding in an age of printing, in large part by
Puritans, who were much inclined toward the writing and printing of
books and pamphlets and the creating of elaborate metaphors proving the
righteousness of their proceedings. Since American turned readily to
the printed word for the expression and the resolution of doubts, of
problems of faith, of anxiety and aspiration, literature became the
primary vehicle for the communication of mythic material, with the
briefest of gaps between the inception of an oral legend and its being
fixed in the public print" (Slotkin 19).
"Appearing in a number of early prophetic books in the Old Testament, the New Jerusalem is an image of hope, a development promised to a people ravaged by turmoil, and nowhere is this image more central than in the Book of Isaiah. Written in the eighth century, Isaiah reflects the political conditions of the time, during which Aram , Assyria, and Egypt were engaged in a cataclysmic struggle for domination of the Fertile Crescent . Wedged precariously between were Israel and Judah , and the writer of Isaiah describes the effects of this holocaust on the chosen land: ‘Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers' (1.7). According to the prophet, however, the true cause of its defiled cities and its desolate, infertile landscape is Israel 's own internal corruption. God's chosen have immersed themselves in material pleasures, displaying a haughty demeanor and indulgence in adornment symptomatic of a great spiritual malaise. Because the faithful have put their trust in idols and the powers of earthly allies such as Egypt , to the neglect of Yahweh, they must be punished by pestilence, famine, and dispersal. Yet out of the catastrophe will emerge a new Israel and a new Jerusalem that will be called ‘the city of righteousness, the faithful city' (1.26)" (Machor 20)
Cf. phoenix bird -- old myth of cleansing destructiveness.
"In the early years, several Puritans sought to affirm the connection between the Massachusetts colony and the paradisiacal holy city of millennial prophecy. In his Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Savior in New England (1654), Edward Johnson identified the building of the Bay Colony as a prelude to the last great battle between the forces of Christ and Antichrist, which would preceded the creation of a new earth and new society" (Machor 56)
© 2009 David Bordelon