AMERICAN LITERATURE

(7^th semester)

Lecture 1

COLONIAL WRITING (1600-1776)

The first explorers and settlers who came to North America from Europe wrote little beyond practical reports which they sent back to the Old World, describing the continent’s natural beauty, its unique plants and animals, and the customs of the dark-skinned inhabitants already there. They did not note the rich local folklore (myths, legends, tales, and lyrics of Indian cultures) – an oral, not written, tradition – which was really the first American literature.

Main literary forms Histories

Leaders of the earliest permanent settlements, in the first years of the 1600s, kept detailed accounts of the lives of their little groups of colonists. Their purpose was not only to tell their friends back home what the new land was like; they also wanted to describe what was in effect a social experiment. The first English colony was set in 1585 at Roanoke, off the coast of North Carolina. The exploration of the area was recorded by Thomas Hariot in “A Brief and True Report of the New-Found Land of Virginia” (published in 1588). Captain John Smith (1580-1631), who organized the English colony of Jamestown (in what is now the state of Virginia), wrote books in which he outlined carefully the economic and political structure of his settlement. He probably wrote the first personal account of a colonial life in America “A True Relation of Virginia” (published in England in 1608). Farther north, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Governor William Bradford (1590-1657) recorded the experiences of the Pilgrims who had come from England and Holland seeking religious freedom. His history “Of Plymouth Plantation” (1651) focused on their hardships, on their spiritual response to life in a remote wilderness, and on the religious meaning of those events. This account was written only for his own reflection.

For a long time, however, there was little imaginative literature produced in the colonies. At first, the settlers’ waking hours were occupied nearly totally with efforts to ensure survival. Later, the community discouraged the writing of works such as plays because these weren’t “useful” and were widely considered to be immoral. In the North, where the communities were run by the religious Protestants generally called Puritans, hard work and material prosperity were greatly valued as outward signs of God’s grace. Making money was also important, for other reasons, to the merchants of the growing cities of New York and Philadelphia and to the farmers of large tracts of land in the southern colonies.

Sermons

The population of the colonies increased rapidly, and by the middle of the 17th century these colonies were no longer crude outposts. In 1647, Massachusetts began to require towns of 50 families or more to establish elementary schools. Excellent colleges such as Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary were founded throughout the colonies for training religious leaders. In 1640, the “Bay Psalm Book” was the first book printed in America; by the early 1700s, newspapers were appearing. As the latest books arrived on ships from Europe, colonists involved themselves in various European religious and political controversies. Puritan sermons, such as those of Increase Mather and his son Cotton Mather, the author of 1702 “Magnalia Christi Americana” (“Ecclesiastical History of New England”) in the late 1600s, or of Jonathan Edwards (Calvinism defender) in the mid-1700s, were often highly intellectual discussions of theology, responding to arguments in the English church. These were not inevitably dry, sterile lectures. Edwards’ famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” for example, was full of imagery and passion. John Woolman, a Quaker, left a record of his innermost thoughts in his “Journal” (published in 1774). The work reflects his deep faith in the “Inner Light”. According to Quaker’s belief, the light is God’s spirit and exists in every human being.

Poetry

The Puritan notion that God should be seen in every phase of daily life also gave rise to poetry. Anne Bradstreet published a volume of fine poems, chiefly religious meditations, in 1650. Edward Taylor, who wrote at about the same time but did not publish his poems during his life, used imagery in the same bold, witty, original way as did English religious poets John Donne and George Herbert. These writers were known as the “Metaphysical” poets. Taylor’s poems belong to the literary tradition of the individual focusing on his interior life. Anne Bradstreet’s poems represent yet another important element of American literature: From the beginning, women were active literary figures in the New World. Michael Wigglesworth, another important colonial poet, achieved wide popularity with his poem “The Day of Doom” (first published in 1662). It gives the description of the day of judgment.