Anne Bradstreet & Phillis
Wheatley
Tim Kennedy
John Howard
Anne Bradstreet
•Anne Bradstreet was a puritan
•Migrated from England in 1600’s
•America’s first poet
•She was married to Simon Bradstreet and had eight children
•Wrote most of her poems during the long periods of loneliness
•well educated by reading books from her fathers library
•Became an unintentional poet when her brother-in-law takes her
manuscript to England and had them published.
How is Anne Bradstreet’s Puritan faith evident in “To
My Dear and Loving Husband” and “Upon the Burning
of Our House”?
To My Dear and Loving Husband
• Heaven rewarding him
• Being together in the afterlife
Upon the Burning of Our House
• Prayed to God to aid her distress
• Blessed God’s name even while her house was burning
• All she had belonged to God
• Says goodbye to vanity
• Speaks of the home that God has for her above when she leaves the
earth
3 parts to
Upon the Burning of Our House
• 1st part- Saint, praying while her house is burning. The fist
part is talking about her house burning
• 2nd part- Human, she is talking about the trunk and the
chest. She had 8 children.
• 3rd part- talking about home in heaven.
Phillis Wheatley
Birth and Early Childhood
• Born in 1753 in Gambia, Africa
• Brought to America at age 7 or 8
• Named after a ship that brought her to
America
• Purchased on July 11, 1761
During Slavery
• While she was a slave she learned about God
• She became a Christian because of her
captivity
• Also learned to read and write because of the
Wheatley family
Later Life
• Became free on October 18, 1773
• Married John Peters
• On a trip to England she became known as
“The Sable Muse”
• Lived in poverty
• Wheatley worked at a boardinghouse
• She died at age 31
Accomplishments
• First African American to publish a book
• First African American to earn a living off
writing
Her Poetry
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Influenced by her religious values
Poems mainly focused on moral and religious subjects
Evident in many of her poems
Never focus on racial equality
On Being Brought from Africa to America
To His Excellency General Washington
On Being Brought from Africa to
America
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A recording of the poem
Many signs of her religion
Sates how she found religion in her captivity
Without her being taken from Africa she would have never
found religion
To His Excellency General Washington
• A poem about the colonies’ struggle for freedom from
England
• The poem also anticipates the future for the new republic
• It was sent to George Washington who was the new
Commander-in-Chief of the army
• The two finally met in 1776
How Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley
differ
• Anne Bradstreet
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came to America by choice
Married with 8 children
Was raised as a Puritan
Came over to America with her father
Bradstreet writes about more acceptable topics
Bradstreet does not show resentment in her poetry
• Phillis Wheatley
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overcame being a slave
Used many allusions
Will show unhappiness in her poetry
Brought to America as a slave
Husband deserted her with 3 children
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Found God and the Puritan religion due to her slavery
The Great Awakening
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Great Awakening just ended before Wheatley’s birth
Religious revival in the Congregational Church
Made religion more personal and less ceremonial
A spiritual renewing that swept through the
American Colonies during the first half of the 18th
century. It was different from Puritan spirituality
because it made religion much more emotional
instead of somber and intellectual. It allowed people
to become more intimate with God.
How does Jonathan Edward’s sermon “Sinners in
The Hands of an Angry God” reflect a change in
Puritan theology?
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Uses emotion to scare the worshipers
Everyone can be saved
Everyone can experience grace
Showed emotional side of religion and intimacy with God
Use own free will to accept God
Similes and Metaphors in “Sinners in
The Hands of an Angry God”
• King’s wrath like the roar of a lion
• People are held over pit of hell likes spiders
• Congregation’s righteousness is compared to a spider web
• Charistmatic- Of, having, or characteristic of
charisma. Charisma is defined as an
extraordinary power, as of healing, given to a
Christian by the Holy Spirit for the good of the
church. Charming and special.
• Evangelical- Belonging to or designating the
Christian churches that emphasize the
teachings and authority of the Scriptures.