American Colonial: Beginning to 1820

• Puritans 1600's
• Predestination
• Not Biblical, decided by Calvin through close reading
• Total depravity
• Unconditional Election
• Limited Atonement
• Irresistible Grace
• Perseverance of Saints
• Existence tied completely to religion
• "Providence" referred to often
• Deists 1690's-1820's
• God=Watchmaker
• Developed during enlightenment
• More emphasis on human agency
• Didn't rely solely on the Bible
• Universe created by benevolent creator with hands-off approach
• Not Christian
• Human Perfectibility
• Science, Reason

• Decrepitude instead of youthfulness is the mark of colonial literature
• instead of finding a challenge to their imagination in the new life about them, the poets continue imitating the cast-off literary fashions of England
• Schools & colleges weren't established until the late 17th Century
• The first books were descriptions of the country and narratives of the settlements to be sent to England to gain more immigration
• Religion is prominent in these works, mostly by the Puritans
• In the 18th C. Enlightenment shifted from Religion to Science, reasoning applied to human nature, society, culture, and political awareness.

Define Colonial American Literature (Beginnings to 1820) - Literature was intended to direct readers in the ways of the Godly as instruction manuals. Puritan poetry was offered uniformly to the service of God. 1620-1776.

Puritanism

• The Puritans were a religious group that in the 1500's-1600's objected to the direction the Church of England had taken. They wanted to purify the church and its beliefs, especially by eliminating practices that were too similar to the Roman Catholic Church.
• Most Puritans remained part of the Church of England, but some, called Separatists, chose to separate themselves from the Church of England. The Pilgrims who traveled to America on the Mayflower in 1620 were a Separatist group that established the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.
• The Puritans followed most of the beliefs of Calvinism: the set of Christian beliefs developed the French theologian John Calvin.
• Some important aspects of Puritan belief:
1. God governs human affairs and has power over every individual and over the Church as a whole. The term Providence refers to the idea that God guides and governs everything: individual lives, whole societies, the natural world, etc.
2. Predestination: God has decided or known from the beginning of time who will be saved and who will be damned. Those who are saved are called the elect or the saints
3. Original sin: Human beings are born with sin; people are fundamentally depraved (evil and corrupt) from birth. Only God's grace can rescue people from sin
4. Each member of the elect will go through a powerful conversion experience at some point: This is an intense religious experience, involving both dread and joy, in which the person realizes how sinful he or she is and takes Christ as a personal savior. The ability to have this experience is given by the grace of God
5. Christ saves the person by taking that person's sin upon himself. The person becomes justified in God's sight (i.e. goes through a process of justification)
6. Justification leads to sanctification. If the Christian believer lives a pious life, according to God's precepts set out in the Bible, God sanctifies the person (i.e. makes the person holy) and makes them successful
• In America, Puritans banned various kinds of entertainment they considered immoral: gambling, maypoles, theater, etc. Behaviors such as drunkenness and premarital sex were strongly condemned.
• Puritan belief has a strong influence on American culture. For example, Puritanism affected how people thought about the poor: if a person is not successful, that person must not yet have been saved, and perhaps is not of the elect. This underlies the idea of the "Puritan work ethic." Success offers proof that one is going to heaven.
• In America, the Puritans believed that they were God's chosen people, the new Israelites. America was therefore the Promised Land, the New Eden, the New Caanan. They would bring about a heaven on earth in America. God has made a Covenant with them as He had with the Israelites of old: if they followed percepts, the colony would prosper
• The point above is related to the concept of typology: the idea that certain people or events were "types" that reenact earlier situations and events. Specifically, the Puritan colonists saw themselves as acting out a new version of Biblical stories, especially the story of the Israelites escaping from Egypt and wandering the wilderness in search of the Promised Land
• Puritan leaders held political and social power in the colonies at Plymouth and Boston, but not all colonists were Puritans. For example, many of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower (as well as later settlers) were sailors, hired hands, planters, merchants, and servants.

In other words: Puritanism:

• Predestination - The belief that everything will happen has already been decided by God or fate & cannot be changed
• Total depravity - as a result of the fall of man, every part of man, his mind, will, emotions, and flesh - have been corrupted by sin
• Unconditional Election - The teaching that before God created the world he chose some for salvation (the elect) the others he left to continue in their sins and receive the just punishment, eternal damnation, for their transgressions of God's Law
• Limited Atonement - maintains that God's design & intent in sending Christ to die on the cross was to pay for the sins and secure the redemption of those whom God has predetermined to save (the elect). Therefore, the benefits of his death were designed for the accrue only to believers.
• Irresistible Grace - teaches that the saving grace of God is effectually applied to those whom he has determined to save (the elect) and in God's timing, overcomes their resistance to obeying the call of the gospel, bringing them to faith in Christ.
• Perseverance of Saints - Those who are truly saved will preserve to the end (in spite of failures); they cannot lose their salvation
• Existence tied completely to religion
• "Providence" referred to often
• Puritan authors - Bradstreet, Taylor, Bradford, Rowlandson
• Calvinism - John Calvin
• Classic doctrine of the trinity
• Themes:
• Sin
• Guilt
• Delight

Colonialism

• Toured the break with the mother country (England) the question was raised, what is American. They questioned the Church of England beliefs and made them more their own, which were closer to the Roman Catholic beliefs. They wanted to have the purer religion.

Deist's 1690's to the 1820's

• God - Watchmaker --> Universe created by benevolent creator with hands off approach
• God created the universe & then let it tick/left it alone
• Developed during Enlightenment
• More emphasis on human agency. The capacity for human beings to make choices
• Didn't rely solely on the Bible
• Human Perfectibility --> people are capable of achieving perfection on Earth without the natural grace of God
• Science/reason
• Decrepitude instead of youthfulness is the mark of colonial literature
• Instead of finding a challenge to their imagination in the new life about them, the poets continue imitating the cast-off literary fashions of England
• Schools & colleges weren't est. until late 17th C
• The first books were descriptions of the country and narratives of the settlements to be sent to England to gain more immigration
• Religion is prominent in these works, mostly by Puritans
• In the 18th C, enlightenment shifted from religion to science. Reasoning applied to human nature, society, culture, and political awareness

Colonial authors: Wheatley, Ashbridge, Edwards (last of the Puritans, but in 18th C), de Crevecoeur, Franklin, Equiano

Themes:

• National identity
• Revolution
• Enlightenment Rationality

The Great Awakening

• Period of increased religious activity in the American Colonies, 1730's-40's
• Emphasis on Christian religious revivals and conversion experiences
• Religion understood to be a highly emotional experience rather than a rational system of beliefs
• Dramatic, theatrical preaching and audience response (weeping, shouting, fainting, etc)
• Ke figures: Jonathan Edwards (in America) and George Whitefield (in England and America)
• 1730's-40's was the first Great Awakening (which is best known)
• Second Great Awakening 1790's-1840's
• Third Great Awakening 1850's-1900
• Others in 1960's-70's? Present time?

"Sinners in the hands of an Angry God"

• Most famous sermon, but not typical of Edwards
• Was read calmly, but congregation became hysterical
• An example of a Jeremiad: a literary/oratorical form that laments or condemns the state of society; a prophecy of society's downfall
• Goal: fear leading to salvation
• Use of logic and rational argument mixed with emotional appeal
• Use of imagery and metaphor: pp 195, 196, 199, 200
• Edwards's understanding of the human mind/psychology: see pg 197, 198, etc.

American Poetry--Intro

A hybrid from the beginning. Language and forms were imported from the old world and used to try and name and describe what the new and strange in the "new world," and which resisted easy expression in the old languages and forms.

The American tradition developed from divergent threads of old traditions: French, Spanish, German, Scandinavian, Native, etc., but came to be definitely and predominately English, yet transformed. It took time for the American "Language" to evolve and gain legitimacy, and time for the "voice" (voices?) of American poetry to emerge, which began to happen in the mid-19th century--200 years after the early settlements

The impulses behind the development of American poetry were the same impulses behind the European settlement of the western hemisphere: economics, religion, politics, adventure (exploring and settling the wilderness), and personality (the emergence of strong leaders and memorable, unique voices, within the larger context of a quest for freedom and a better, more meaningful life).

American poetry (and all art in the new world) emerged from the tension that existed between the freedom implied by the seemingly wide-open continent and its vast resources and the restraints imposed by the harsh conditions of survival and by the traditions, languages, forms, and institutions imported from the old world.

It emerged from the struggle, on the other hand, to find origins one could believe in and that would give one a needed sense of identity and purpose, and the struggle, on the other hand, against those forces that would make one something other than what one was or wanted to be -- a struggle to escape whatever enslaved one. The struggle, too, to make poetry out of the non-poetic, to make art out of the individual's encounter with the raw experience and brutal forces of unrestrained natural power and the unfamiliar. E.g., slave narratives, captivity narratives.