教
学 做
内
容
Teaching Plan Two
Teaching Contents: The American Literature in the Colonial Period
Teaching Times: Two Classes
Teaching Aims: To Introduce the Characteristics of the American Literature
in the Colonial Period and to Study the Major Literary Figures and
their literary works
Teaching Important Points: the Characteristics of the American Literature
in the Colonial Period
Teaching Process:
Step1: Study the American Literature in the Colonial Period
The colonial period extends from the Virginia and Massachusetts
settlements of the 17th century through the Great Awakening, a religious
revival in the 1740s, and its aftermath. Although dominated by
Puritan-Calvinistic doctrine, early American literature was not confined to
religious subjects. The religious
writings, as well as the more
secular chronicles, are the history of exceptional individuals who rose
above the physically difficult and spiritually demanding environment of the
New World. These early writers set the tone and the rhetoric and
foreshadowed the major concerns of later American writing.
The first generation of settlers wrote sermons, religious tracts, diaries,
and histories of their undertakings. The leading religious controversialists
were John COTTON, Anne HUTCHINSON, Roger WILLIAMS, and John
WINTHROP. Winthrop's Journal, originally printed as a History of New
England from 1630 to 1649, remains a major historical source. It was
followed by William BRADFORD's History of Plymouth Plantation (pub.
1856); Edward Johnson's History of New England (1654); and Thomas
MORTON's New English Canaan (1637), which stands out for its
irreverence and hints of bawdiness. Histories of the South with enduring
literary qualities were Capt. John SMITH's The Generall Historie of
Virginia (1624) and, much later, William BYRD's History of the Dividing
Line (composed and reworked from 1728 but not published until 1841).
Puritan writers stressed religious and didactic themes.
The first book published in America was the Bay Psalm Book: The
Whole Book of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre(1640).
Michael WIGGLESWORTH continued in the Puritan vein, exhorting
against sin in his popular poem, Day of Doom (1662). Meanwhile, poetry
of genuine accomplishment and a less stern, Puritan emphasis was written
by Anne BRADSTREET in The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
(1650) and by Edward TAYLOR, whose poems were not discovered until
1939. More in accord with the Puritan temperament are the spiritual
autobiographies, which describe the Puritan experience of conversion.
备
注
Thomas Shepard's The Sincere Convert (1640) is one of the first; Jonathan
Edwards's "Personal Narrative," first published in 1765 in the Life of the
Rev. J. Edwards by the theologian Samuel Hopkins, is one of the last. The
memorable works of the colonial period depicted the conditions of life in
the New World. The first and best-known narrative of captivity by
Indians was Mary ROWLANDSON's Captivity and Restauration (1682).
Among diarists, Sarah Kemble Knight's account of her journey (1704)
from Boston to New York on horseback and Samuel SEWALL's diaries
(spanning 1673 to 1729) describe life in the colonies.
The Puritan literary ideal is best summed up in the gargantuan
ecclesiastical history by Cotton Mather, the Magnalia Christi Americana,
or the Ecclesiastical History of New England from its First Planting in the
New Year 1620, unto the Year of our Lord 1698 (1702). This compendium
celebrates America and its religious Puritan leaders in a rhetoric of
magnificent extravagance. An equally intense piety pervades the writings
of Jonathan EDWARDS early in the 18th century. Besides his spiritual
autobiography, Edwards is known for A Treatise Concerning Religious
Affections (1746) and Freedom of the Will (1754), both of which try to
incorporate the philosophy of John Locke, and for what is probably the
most famous sermon of hellfire and brimstone ever preached, "Sinners in
the Hands of an Angry God" (1741). The young Benjamin FRANKLIN
wrote during the same period as Edwards. Although his Poor Richard's
Almanack (1732) anticipated a more rational moralism, it contained
much of the proverbial wisdom that Franklin had learned from works such
as Cotton Mather's Bonifacius, or Essays To Do Good (1710). Similarly,
Franklin's Autobiography reflected a concern for one's actions that was
typical of the Puritan spiritual autobiographers.
Step2: Review the important points in the contents
Step3: Homework:
Preview the next chapter