
American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics (always songs) of Indian cultures.

There was no written literature among the Indian cultures.

The earliest American writings were concerned directly with the dream of a new world, and mostly accounts of pioneering motives and settlements were published.






Regional literature has always been important in the United
States.
Until the end of the 19th century, American literature was dominated by the works of New Englanders, such as
Cotton Mather.
Sermons and religious tracts provided the greatest part of the writing.
The Puritan definition of good writing was that which brought home a full awareness of the importance of worshipping
God and of the spiritual dangers that the soul faced.
.

th

The 18th-century American
Enlightenment was 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 were devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man


The Romantic movement reached
America around the year 1820.

Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive
American voice.

The solidification of a national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured masterpieces by authors such as
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry
David Thoreau.

th

In the second half of the 19th century, the United States was transformed into a modern, industrial nation. As industrialization grew, so did alienation.

Characteristic American novels of the period, for example by
Stephen Crane and Jack London, depict the damage of economic forces and alienation on the weak or vulnerable individual.

Survivors, like Mark Twain's Huck
Finn, endure through inner strength involving kindness, flexibility, and, above all, individuality.

 Native-American Literature is a Post-Colonial Literature
 Literature by a COLONIZING culture (e.g. people of
European descent) usually distorts the experience and realities of the colonized people —creates a picture of innate inferiority in terms of the colonized people

 Literature by the
COLONIZED culture (e.g.
Native Americans) attempts to regain the power to speak for themselves, rather than be spoken
ABOUT by the colonizers



This literature articulates group identity, reclaims the past, writes their version of history —but also recognizes the influence of the colonizer
Colonizing countries often appropriate the languages, images, scenes, traditions, etc. of the colonized land —and vice versa






Forms of expressive culture such as these myths should embody the basic beliefs and values of the people who create them.
These beliefs and values can be roughly organized in three areas:
(1) beliefs about the nature of the physical world;
(2) beliefs about social order and appropriate behavior; and
(3) beliefs about human nature and the problem of good and evil.



Folktales passed down by ancestors
Taught a moral of story
Snake Dance





The popular belief is that mythology is necessarily something that is false.
Consider this definition of myth: "The dramatic representation of culturally important truths in narrative form."
Such a definition highlights the fact that myths represent or dramatize shared visions of the world for the people who hold them.
Myths articulate the fundamental truths about the shape of the universe and the nature of humanity.


Functions
1. Beliefs about nature of physical world
2. Beliefs about social order and appropriate behavior
3. Beliefs about human nature and the problem of good and evil


Characteristics of Myths
1. Myths: primal world
2. Beings are animals spirits in more or less human form: monsters, confusions of nature

Characteristics of Legends
1. Culture hero or transformer orders the world
2. Culture hero or transformer turns animal people into animals
3. Other beings become landmarks



1. Culture heroes a. Dramatize events and behaviors b. Show how to do what is right and how we become the people we are c. Shape the world and gives it its character by theft of sun, fire, or water


2. Trickster heroes (Raven, Spider) a. Provide for disorder and change b. Enable us to see the seamy underside of life c. d. Provide for the possibility of change e. May be over reachers who get their comeuppance


1. Formation of the world through struggle and robbery

2. Movement from a sky world to a water world by means of a fall

3. Fortunate fall; creation story

4. Earth-diver myth a. flood that occurred after creation of the universe b. recreation of the present world out of mud brought up from under the water by the earth-diver (muskrat or water bird)

5. Theft of fire

6. Emergence myths: a. ascent of beings from under the surface of the earth to its surface b. ascent from a series of underworlds

The Iroquois told of a woman who fell from the sky world. With the help of birds and other animals, the present land was formed on the back of a great turtle. The woman's grandsons—one good, one evil—created the various opposing forces, such as medicines and poisons, that affect human life.


A. Population
(estimated)
– 1. European arrival
– a. 18 million in North
America b. 5 million in U. S.
– 2. 1980 census
(estimate): 1,418,195

B. Culture
– 1. European arrival
– a. Over 300 cultural groups b. 200 languages
– 2. Present-day: By
1940, 149 languages still in use











Treat the Earth and all that dwell thereon with respect!
Remain close to the Great Spirit
Show great respect for your fellow beings
Work together for the benefit of all mankind!
Give assistance and kindness wherever needed
Do what you know to be right
Look after the well-being of mind and body
Dedicate a share of your efforts to the greater good
Be truthful and honest at all times
Take full responsibility for your actions.....


THOSE men build many houses:
They dig the earth, and they build;
They cut down the trees, and they build;
They work always -- building.
From the elevation of the mountainside
I behold the clouds:
The clouds build many beautiful houses in the sky:
They build, and they tear down;
They build, and they dissolve. . . .
The cities of white men,
They are not beautiful like the cloud cities;
They are not vast, like the cloud cities. .
. .
A wind-swept teepee
Is all the house I own. . . .


FAIR is the white star of twilight, and the sky clearer
At the day's end;
But she is fairer, and she is dearer.
She, my heart's friend!
Far stars and fair in the skies bending,
Low stars of hearth fires and wood smoke ascending,
The meadow-lark's nested,
The night hawk is winging;
Home through the star-shine the hunter comes singing.
Fair is the white star of twilight,
And the moon roving
To the sky's end;
But she is fairer, better worth loving,
She, my heart's friend.
Shoshone Love Song.

When my songs first were, they made my songs with words of jet.
Earth when it was made
Sky when it was made
Earth to the end
Sky to the end
Black dancer, black thunder, when they came toward each other
All the bad things that used to be vanished.
The bad wishes that were in the world all vanished.



1
Before this world existed, the holy people made themselves visible by becoming clouds, sun, moon, trees, bodies of water, thunder rain, snow, and other aspects of this world we live in. That way, they said, we would never be alone.
So it is possible to talk to them and pray, no matter where we are and how we feel. Biyázhí daniidlí, we are their little ones.
2
Since the beginning, the people have gone outdoors at dawn to pray,
The morning light, adinídíín, represents knowledge and mental awareness.
With the dawn come the holy ones who bring blessings and daily gifts, because they are grateful when we remember them.


3
When you were born and took your first breath, different colors and different kinds of wind entered through your fingertips and the whorl on top of your head. Within us, as we breathe, are the light breezes that cool a summer afternoon, within us the tumbling winds that precede rain, within us sheets of hard-thundering rain, within us dust-filled layers of wind that sweep in from the mountains, within us gentle night flutters that lull us to sleep.
To see this, blow on your hand now.
Each sound we make evokes the power of these winds and we are, at once, gentle and powerful.

 View 1: Native Americans lost tribes of Israel, waiting for conversion
 View 2: Native Americans as children of Satan – descendents of fallen angels
 Either way, justification to eradicate people and culture
Image: The Death of Jane McCrea , John Vanderlyn, 1804







“Noble Savage”
“Savage” meaning “uncivilized”
“Noble” meaning innocent, pure, wise, childlike, connected to nature, spiritual —but uncultured
Merely inferior rather than the intrinsically evil “ignoble savage” of New England
Open to European guidance and deliverance
Totally romanticized view Image: Baptism of Pocahontas
G. Chapman, Capitol Rotunda,
Washington D.C.
, John


􀂄 18th Century = Age of Reason,
Enlightenment

􀂄 Profound changes took place in western world

􀂄 European and African populations in North America – from
250,000 in 1700 to 5,000,000 in 1800

􀂄 Continuous westward expansion displaced Native Americans

􀂄 Ethnic diversity, economic strength, Enlightenment ideals laid foundation for the United States


􀂄 Beginning of 18th Century, colonies had one newspaper; by
1800 there were 200

􀂄 Benjamin Franklin began first
American magazine = General
Magazine, in Philadelphia in 1741; by 1800, 91 magazines

􀂄 Franklin exemplified and wrote secular ideals, humanist concepts, scientific ideas, master of diplomacy; he was instrumental in starting libraries, schools, hospitals, urban fire stations, post office

􀂄 American writing patterned on
18th Century English writing, but lagged behind slightly


Penn law in 1700 prohibited stage plays; early colonists thought plays were indecent and corrupting, actors immoral and spread disease

􀂄 American literature in 18th
Century dominated by pamphlets, essay, journal articles, newspapers, and the political documents we use still





􀂄 Puritans and Pilgrims were members of the
Church of England
􀂄 Pilgrims = Separatists moved to Holland in 1608 to practice a “pure and unspotted” Christianity
􀂄 Eventually Pilgrims became disenchanted with Holland and sailed to the Colonies =
102 pilgrims left Holland and about 50 landed at
Plymouth, Mass., in 1620


Puritans were dedicated to self-determination, independence and freedom, strong tradition of preaching, and thus education

􀂄 Sermons were most popular literary form

􀂄 Mass Bay Colony became cultural center of colonies


The Puritans who, in the 1560s, first began to be (contemptuously) referred to as such, were ardent reformers, seeking to bring the
Church to a state of purity been in the time of Christ.
that would match Christianity as it had

The Calvinist doctrine of predestination, with which
Puritanism agreed, was held by the
Pilgrims as well: both believed that the human state was one of sin and depravity; that after the Fall all but an elect group were irrevocably bound for hell.



It was because the Puritan faith could reach such extremes that the Salem witch-trials broke out.
Of course, as Thomas H.
Johnson writes, the belief in witches was generally questioned by no one--Puritan or otherwise--"and even as late as the close of the seventeenth century many a scientist of repute in England accepted certain phenomena as due to witchcraft."







The "lurid details" of (1689), which helped generate an unbalanced fascination with witchcraft.
This would prove both fire and tinder for Salem Village, so that "by
September, twenty people and two dogs had been executed as witches" and hundreds more were either in jail or were accused (Miller, II: 735).
Yet to envision the Puritan community at this point simply as a mob of hysterical zealots is to lose sight of those prominent figures who stood against the proceedings.
Granted that they did not speak out too loudly at the height of the fervor, but then to do so would be to risk exposure to a confusion of plague-like properties, where the testimony of an alleged victim alone was enough to condemn a person.
But it was the injustice of this very condition against which men such as
Thomas Brattle and Increase Mather wrote. Brattle's "A Full and Candid
Account of the Delusion called Witchcraft...." (1692) argued that the evidence was no true evidence at all, and the accusers, in declaring that they were informed by the devil as to who afflicted them, were only offering the devil's testimony.
Mather wrote in 1693, in Cases of Conscience concerning Evil Spirits
Innocent Person be Condemned" (Qtd. in Miller, II: 736).
, that
"it were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one








􀂄 Puritanism declined before end of colonial period
􀂄 Religious and social unity gave way to diversity
􀂄 Early American literature, following the Puritan era, included
􀂄 Biographies
􀂄 Secular poetry
􀂄 Political documents/speeches


􀂄 First poet of English-speaking North
America

􀂄 Puritan who balanced her roles of wife and mother and published poet

􀂄 Born in England, raised in luxury on the estate of the Earl of Lincoln, where her father, Thomas Dudley, was steward

􀂄 At 16 she married Simon Bradstreet,
Puritan and Cambridge University graduate

􀂄 Both families—Dudleys and
Bradstreets—sailed on Arbella to
Mass Bay Colony
􀂄


Bradstreet and husband settled on farm near Andover, raised eight children, and she wrote poetry

􀂄 In 1650 poems were published
– The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung
Up in American or Several Poems,
Compiled with a Great Variety of
Wit and Learning, Full of
Delight…by a Gentlewoman of
Those Parts = first volume of published poetry written by colonist

􀂄 Poems addressed vanity of worldly pleasures, brevity of life, resignation to God’s will

1
2
4
3
1By night when others soundly slept
2And hath at once both ease and Rest,
3My waking eyes were open kept
4And so to lie I found it best.
5I sought him whom my Soul did Love,
6With tears I sought him earnestly.
7He bow'd his ear down from Above.
8In vain I did not seek or cry.
9My hungry Soul he fill'd with Good;
10He in his Bottle put my tears,
11My smarting wounds washt in his blood,
12And banisht thence my Doubts and fears.
13What to my Saviour shall I give
14Who freely hath done this for me?
15I'll serve him here whilst I shall live
16And Loue him to Eternity


If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persevere
That when we live no more, we may live ever.


􀂄 Father, Increase Mather, president of Harvard

􀂄 Cotton Mather was brilliant

􀂄 By 12 he had learned Latin, read New Testament in Greek, studied Hebrew

􀂄 At Harvard, he was considered a bookworm, but graduated at 15

􀂄 Stuttered as a child, but stuttering improved as an adult, and Mather was ordained in 1685 at
Second Church of Boston, where he was its minister for the rest of his life.


􀂄 Had 15 children, but only two survived him

􀂄 Married three times, first two died, third went insane

􀂄 Financial problems, public humiliations caused by a bad son

􀂄 Has been linked to Salem witch trials, but he never actually participated in them, although he did believe in witchcraft

􀂄 Author of > 400 works = essays, biographies, science, medicine, philosophy and theology studies, and thousands of sermons


A Good School deserves to be call'd, the very Salt of the Town, that hath it: And the Pastors of every Town are under peculiar obligations to make this a part of their Pastoral Care, That they may have a Good School, in their Neighborhood.

A woeful putrefaction threatens the Rising Generation; Barbarous
Ignorance, and the unavoidable consequence of it, Outrageous
Wickedness will make the Rising Generation Loathsome, if it have not Schools to preserve it.

But Schools, wherein the Youth may by able Masters be Taught the
Things that are necessary to qualify them for future
Serviceableness, and have their Manners therewithal well-formed under a Laudable Discipline, and be over and above Well-Catechized in the principles of Religion, Those would be a Glory of our Land, and the preservatives of all other Glory.