II. The Function of Puritan Writers

1. To transform a mysterious God - mysterious because he is separate from the world.

2. To make him more relevant to the universe.

3. To glorify God.

III. The Style of Puritan Writing

1. Protestant - against ornateness; reverence for the Bible.

2. Purposiveness - there was a purpose to Puritan writing - described in Part II above.

3. Puritan writing reflected the character and scope of the reading public, which was literate and well-grounded in religion.

IV. Reasons for Puritan Literary Dominance over the Virginians

1. Puritans were basically middle class and fairly well-educated.

2. Virginians were tradesmen and separated from English writing.

3. Puritans were children of the covenant; gave them a drive and a purpose to write.

V. Common Themes in Early Puritan Writing

1. Idealism - both religious and political.

2. Pragmaticism - practicality and purposiveness.

VI. Forces Undermining Puritanism

1. A person's natural desire to do good - this works against predestination.

2. Dislike of a "closed" life.

3. Resentment of the power of the few over many.

4. Change in economic conditions - growth of fishery, farms, etc.

5. Presence of the leaders of dissent - Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams.

6. The presence of the frontier - concept of self-reliance, individualism, and optimism.

7. Change in political conditions - Massachusetts became a Crown colony.

8. Theocracy suffered from a lack of flexibility.

9. Growth of rationality - use of the mind to know God - less dependence on the Bible.

10. Cosmopolitanism of the new immigrants.

VII. Visible Signs of Puritan Decay

1. Visible decay of godliness.

2. Manifestations of pride - especially among the new rich.

3. Presence of "heretics" - Quakers and Anabaptists.

4. Violations of the Sabbath and swearing and sleeping during sermons.

5. Decay in family government.

6. People full of contention - rise in lawsuits and lawyers.

7. Sins of sex and alcohol on the increase.

8. Decay in business morality - lying, laborers underpaid, etc.

9. No disposition to reform.

10. Lacking in social behavior.

H. L. Mencken: "A Puritan is one who suspects somewhere someone is having a good time."

New England

Two Important New England Settlements:

The Plymouth Colony
Flagship Mayflower arrives - 1620
Leader - William Bradford
Settlers known as Pilgrims and Separatists
"The Mayflower Compact" provides for
social, religious, and economic freedom,
while still maintaining ties to Great Britain.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony
Flagship Arbella arrives - 1630
Leader - John Winthrop
Settlers are mostly Puritans or Congregational Puritans
"The Arbella Covenant" clearly establishes
a religious and theocratic settlement,
free of ties to Great Britain.

Oxford Dictionary of British History

New England was the name given by Captain John Smith in 1614 to the coastline of America north of the Hudson river. Two years later he published a Description of New England, claiming at least 25 fine harbours. The Mayflower settlers landed at Plymouth in 1620 and the name New England was applied to the colony (later absorbed by Massachusetts), New Haven (later part of Connecticut), Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. The New England colonies, with their strong puritan tradition, ultimately became the core of American resistance in the War of Independence.

Houghton Mifflin Word Origins: New England

This was in fact four years before any English speakers permanently settled in that northern location. But in 1616 it was already the subject of the book A Description of New England, by that busy explorer and promoter Captain John Smith, who had visited the land two years before.

According to Smith, New England owes its name to Sir Francis Drake. Not that Drake ever saw or talked about New England, but in sailing around the world he stopped in 1579 at a place on the Pacific coast of North America and claimed it as Nova Albion, the Latin for "New England." Following Drake's lead, Smith designated the region at a similar latitude on the Atlantic coast by the same name, translated into plain English.

The very words New England show the direction of Smith's thinking. This was to be an extension of Old England, not a new kind of community. The map in his book gives only English names for the places of New England, and he provides an accompanying list showing thirty American Indian names replaced by English ones: Accomack by Plimouth, Massachusets River by Charles River, Kinebeck by Edenborough, to list a few. Some of those changes succeeded. But what eventually happened after the Plymouth colonists landed four years later has turned out differently than Smith had imagined, for Indian names as well as English ones still cover the New England landscape.

Frontier

The Frontier Hypothesis or the Turner Thesis:

A Wisconsin historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, gave his frontier statement in a paper on "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" read before the American Historical Association at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. According to Henry Nash Smith (listed below), Turner's statement revolutionized American histriography and eventually made itself felt in economics and sociology, in literary criticism, and even in politics.

Turner's central contention was that "the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development." Turner maintained that the West, not the proslavery South or the antislavery North, was the most important among American sections, and that the novel attitudes and institutions produced by the frontier, especially through its encouragement of democracy, had been more significant than the imported European heritage in shaping American society.

Turner's most important debt to his intellectual traditions is the ideas of savagery and civilization that he uses to define the central factor of the frontier. His frontier is explicitly "the meeting point between savagery and civilization." From the standpoint of economic theory the wilderness beyond the frontier, the realm of savagery, is a constant receding area of free land. Free land tended to relieve poverty and fostered economic equality. Both these tendencies made for an increase of democracy. Turner was convinced that democracy, the rise of the common man, was one of the great movements of modern history.

In 1893 Turner said that "democracy (is) born of free land," as well as in his celebrated pronouncement made twenty years later: "American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came stark and strong and full of life out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier." - Henry Nash Smith

American Adam

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1211