American Literature
Lecture Two
030533/4/5, 19th Sep. 2006
Part ONE. Early American and
Colonial Period to 1765
1. Introduction
1.
2.
Instead of beginning with folk tales and songs the American
literature began with abstractions and proceeded from philosophy
to fiction because there were no written literature among the more
than 500 different Indian languages and tribal cultures that
existed in North America before the first Europeans arrived there
and set up the first colony Jamestown in about 1607.
American writing began with the work of English adventurers
and colonists in the New World chiefly for the benefit of readers
in the mother country. Some of these early works reached the
level of literature, as in the robust and perhaps truthful account of
his adventures by Captain John Smith and the sober, tendentious
journalistic histories of John Winthrop and William Bradford in
New England. From the beginning, however, the literature of
New England was also directed to the edification and
instruction of the colonists themselves, intended to direct
them in the ways of the godly.
Rather rude
3)
4)
Therefore the writing in this period was essentially two kinds: (1)
practical matter-of-fact accounts of farming, hunting, travel, etc.
designed to inform people “at home” what life was like in the
new world, and, often, to induce their immigration; (2) highly
theoretical, generally polemical, discussions of religious
questions.
Furthermore, the influential Protestant work ethic, reinforced by
the practical necessities of a hard pioneer life, inhibited the
development of any reading matter designed simply for leisuretime entertainment.
It is the belief that work itself is good in addition to what it
achieves; that time saved by efficiency or good fortune should
not be spent in leisure but in doing further work; that idleness is
always immoral and likely to lead to even worse sin since “the
devil finds work for idle hands to do”. This belief later
developed into the American philosophic idea Puritanism.
4)
5)
The first work published in the Puritan colonies was the Bay
Psalm Book (1640), and the whole effort of the divines who
wrote furiously to set forth their views was to defend and
promote visions
of the religious state. They set forth their
马萨诸塞海湾地区赞美诗篇
visions—in effect the first formulation of the concept of
national destiny—in a series of impassioned histories and
jeremiads from Edward Johnson’s Wonder-Working
Providence (1654) to Cotton Mather’s epic Magnalia Christi
Americana (1702). 创造神迹的天福
基督在北美的辉煌
Even Puritan poetry was offered uniformly to the service of
God. Michael Wigglesworth’s Day of Doom (1662) was
uncompromisingly theological, and Anne Bradstreet’s poems,
issued as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650),
were reflective of her own piety. The best of the Puritan poets,
Edward Taylor, whose work was not published until two
centuries after his death, wrote metaphysical verse,
6) Sermons and tracts poured forth until
austere Calvinism found its last utterance
in the words of Jonathan Edwards. In the
other colonies writing was usually more
mundane and on the whole less notable,
though the journal of the Quaker John
Woolman is highly esteemed, and some
critics maintain that the best writing of
the colonial period is found in the witty
and urbane observations of William Byrd,
a gentleman planter of Westover, Virginia.
2. The Main Features of this period
1) 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.
2) In content these early writings served either God or
colonial expansion or both. In form, if there was any
form at all, English literary traditions were faithfully
imitated and transplanted.
3) The Puritanism formed in this period was one of the
most enduring shaping influences in American thought
and American literature.
3. Puritanism
1)
2)
3)
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.
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.
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.
Part two. The period of
Enlightenment and the
Independence War (1765 -1800)
I. Introduction
1)
2)
3)
The 18th-century American enlightenment as a movement
marked by an emphasis on rationality rather than tradition,
scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma, and
representative government in place of monarchy.
Enlightenment thinkers and writers, such as Benjamin
Franklin and Thomas Paine, were devoted to the ideals of
justice, liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man.
In these period with the exception of outstanding political
writing, such as Common sense, Declaration of Independence,
The Federalist Papers and so on, few works of note appeared.
Even if there appeared poetry and fiction, they were full of
imitativeness and vague universality. So most Americans were
painfully aware of their excessive dependence on English
literary models. The search for a native literature became a
national obsession.
4)
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Despite these we should pay attention to several points in this
period:
William Hill Brown (1765-1793) published the first American
novel The Power of Sympathy in 1789.
Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) was the first American
author to attempt to live from his writing. He developed the genre
of American Gothic.
The Dictionary edited by Noah Webster (1758-1843) based the
American lexicography. Updated Webster’s dictionaries are still
standard today.
Philip Freneau’s (1752-1832) was known as "the poet of the
American Revolution". His major themes are death, nature,
transition, and the human in nature. All of these themes become
important in 19th century writing. All the while...in romanticizing
the wonders of nature in his writings...he searched for an
American idiom in verse.
II. Benjamin Franklin
1706 - 1790
(An Extraordinary Life and An Electric Mind)
1. His Life
1) Born the tenth of fifteen children in a poor candle and
soap maker’s family, he had to leave school before he
was eleven.
2) At twelve he was apprenticed to an older brother,
James, a printer in Boston.
3) As a voracious reader he managed to make up for the
deficiency by his own effort and began at 16 to
publish essays under the pseudonym, Silence Dogood,
essays commenting on social life in Boston.
4) When he was 17 he ran away to Philadelphia to make
his own fortune marking the beginning of a long
success story of an archetypal kind.
5) He set himself up as an independent printer and
publisher, found the Junto Club and subscription
library, issued the immensely popular Poor Richard’s
Almanac.
6) Retired around forty-two, he did what was to him a
great happiness: read, make scientific experiments and
do good to his fellowmen. He helped to find the
Pennsylvania Hospital, an academy which led to the
University of Pennsylvania, and the American
Philosophical Society.
7) At the same time he did a lot of famous experiments and
invented many things such as volunteer fire departments,
effective street lighting, the Franklin Stove, bifocal
glasses, efficient heating devices, lightning-rod and so
on.
8) Beginning his public career in the early fifties, he
became a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, the
Deputy Postmaster-General for the colonies, and for
some eighteen years served as representative of the
colonies in London.
9) During the War of Independence, he was made a
delegate to the Continental Congress and a member of
the committee to write the Declaration of Independence.
One of the makers of the new nation, he was
instrumental in bringing France into an alliance with
America against England, and played a decisive role at
the Constitutional Convention.
2. Major Works
1) Poor Richard’s Almanac

a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
g)
h)
i)
j)
Maxims（谚语，格言） and axioms（哲理，格言）
Lost time is never found again.
A penny saved is a penny earned.
God help them that help themselves.
Fish and visitors stink in three days.
Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy,
and wise.
Ale in, truth out.
Eat not to dullness. Drink not to elevation.
Diligence is the Mother of Good Luck.
One Today is worth two tomorrow.
Industry pays debts. Despair encreaseth them.
2)
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Autobiography
It is perhaps the first real post-revolutionary American writing as
well as the first real autobiography in English.
It gives us the simple yet immensely fascinating record of a man
rising to wealth and fame from a state of poverty and obscurity into
which he was born, the faithful account of the colorful career of
America’s first self-made man.
First of all, it is a puritan document. The most famous section
describes his scientific scheme of self-examination and selfimprovement.
It is also an eloquent elucidation of the fact that Franklin was
spokesman for the new order of eighteenth century enlightenment,
and that he represented in America all its ideas, that man is basically
good and free, by nature endowed by God with certain inalienable
rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It is the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness, and concision. The
plainness of its style, the homeliness of imagery, the simplicity of
diction, syntax and expression are some of the salient features we
cannot mistake.
3. Evaluation
1) He was a rare genius in human history. Nature seemed
particularly lavish and happy when he was shaped.
Everything seems to meet in this one man, mind and
will, talent and art, strength and ease, wit and grace,
and he became almost everything: a printer,
postmaster, citizen, almanac maker, essayist, scientist,
inventor, orator, statesman, philosopher, political
economist, ambassador, musician and parlor man.
2) He was the first great self-made man in America, a
poor democrat born in an aristocratic age that his fine
example helped to liberalize.
3) Politically he brought the colonial era to a close. For quite
some time he was regarded as the father of all Yankees,
even more than Washington was. He was the only
American to sign the four documents that created the
United States: the declaration of Independence, the treaty
of alliance with France, the treaty of peace with England,
and the constitution.
4) Scientifically, as the symbol of America in the Age of
Enlightenment, he invented a lot of useful implements.
His research on electricity, his famous experiment with his
kite line and many others made him the preeminent
scientist of his day.
5) Literally, he really opened the story of American literature.
D. H. Lawrance agreed that Franklin was everything but a
poet. In the Scottish philosopher David Hume’s eyes he
was America’s “first great man of letters”.