美国文学史
3 ) Actually it is a code of values, a philosophy of life and a point of view in American minds, also a two-faceted tradition of religious idealism and level-headed common sense.
1.
Anne Bradstreet’s Works
“Some verses on the Burning of Our House” “The Spirit and the Flesh”
The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (the first collection published by English colonists living in America)
2.Anne Bradstreet’s Life
* She was born and educated in England.
* At the age of 18, she came to America in 1630 with her father and husband. * She had 8 children. * She became known as the “Tenth Muse” who appeared in America.
1. features of Puritanism
(1)Predestination: God decided everything before things occurred.
(2)Original sin: Human beings were born to be evil, and this original sin can be passed down from generation to generation. (3)Total depravity
Why did Puritans come to America?
- to reform the Church of England - to have an entirely new church - to escape religious persecution * God’s chosen people * To seek a new Garden of Eden * To build “City of God on earth”
1)
Simply speaking, American Puritanism just refers to the spirit and ideal of puritans who settled in the North American continent in the early part of the seventeenth century because of religious persecutions. In content it means scrupulous moral rigor, especially hostility to social pleasures and indulgences, that is strictness,sternness and austerity in conduct and religion.
Three major poets in colonial period:
1.
Anne Bradstreet
2.
3.
Michael Wigglesworth
Edward Taylor
1. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
the first noted poetess in colonial period
Colonial Period (1607-1775)
II.Overview of the literature1.
types of writingdiaries, histories,
journals, letters, travel autobiographies/biographies, sermons2.
1.
2.
They were servants of God.---Puritan poets
They faithfully imitated and transplanted English literary traditions.---In English style They served either God or colonial expansion or both.
By Nature's self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun the vulger eye, And planted here the guardian shade, And sent soft waters murmuring by; Thus quietly thy summer goes, Thy days declining to repose.
Chapter 1
Conolianl America
I.
Background: Puritanism
II.
Overview of the literature
I.
Background: Puritanism
They follow the ideas of the Swiss reformer John Calvin.
Features of Colonial Poets
American literature grew out of humble origins. Diaries, histories, journals, letters, commonplace books, travel books, sermons, in short, personal literature in its various forms, occupy a major position in the literature of the early colonial period.
wrБайду номын сангаасters of colonial period
books,
(1) Anne Bradstreet
(2) Edward Taylor (3) Roger Williams (4) John Woolman (5) Thomas Paine (6) Philip Freneau
3.
The Wild Honey Suckle
by Philip Freneau
Fair flower, that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent,dull retreat,
Untouched thy honeyed blossoms blow, Unseen thy little branches greet: No roving foot shall crush thee here, No busy hand provoke a tear.
(3)Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American.
2) With time passing it became a dominant factor in American life, one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American Literature. To some extent it is a state of mind, a part of the national cultural atmosphere that the American breathes, rather than a set of tenets.
(4)With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible.
The poem was written in regular 6-line tetrameter stanzas,rhyming:ababcc .The structure of the poem is regular,so it has the neoclassic quality of proportion and balance. Alliteration ,assonance,masculine rhyme used in the poem also produce musical or melodious and harmonious,which matches the beautyof the flower,the beauty of poem is partly ambodied in the effects created through changes in the rhythm. The poem contains iambics trochaics and spondee. The arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables suggests the transience of the life of the flower and the poet's emotional change.the poem is full of sensuous images such as fair flower visual image,comely grow kinasthetic image and honeyed blossoms olfactory image.All the images make us feel pity for the beautiful flower which has only a short life. The line"the sapace is but an hour"contains a hyperbole stressing and transience of life. The tone of the poem is both sentimental and optimistic.