Literature between 1620-1700
Puritan Literature
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y
st_uUL0gqE&feature=related
Imagine the passage from 17th century
England to the New World
• The violence and disruptions of the old country
and the unknown terrors of the new one; the
loss of home, of kinship, of worldly possessions
(these ships were very small), of so much that
matters to one’s personal and cultural identity.
Puritanism in New England
• http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/purdef.htm
• Definitions:
– The term "Puritan" first began as a taunt or insult applied by traditional
Anglicans to those who criticized or wished to "purify" the Church of England.
Although the word is often applied loosely, "Puritan" refers to two distinct
groups: "separating" Puritans, such as the Plymouth colonists, who believed
that the Church of England was corrupt and that true Christians must separate
themselves from it; and non-separating Puritans, such as the colonists who
settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who believed in reform but not
separation.
– Most Massachusetts colonists were nonseparating Puritans who wished to
reform the established church, largely Congregationalists who believed in
forming churches through voluntary compacts.
– The idea of compacts or covenants was central to the Puritans' conception of
social, political, and religious organizations.
The Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock
• A year after landing at Plymouth Rock, half of
the Mayflower Pilgrims were dead…
• Religious warfare raged in Europe; civil war
would soon break out in the English
homeland, and a succession of religious
upheavals and political changes over the
previous half century had claimed tens of
thousands of lives.
What did morality mean to these
people?
• The Massachusetts Bay Colonists were primarily,
though not exclusively, Puritan in ideology, which
meant that most believed in the literal authority
of the Bible.
• They saw the Bible as a topological model for
their own lives – the Puritan writers use biblical
metaphors to explain the Puritan condition; they
often refer to themselves, for example, as
Israelites, and the New World becomes Canaan.
Beliefs
• Several beliefs differentiated Puritans from other Christians.
•
The first was their belief in predestination.
•
Puritans believed that belief in Jesus and participation in the sacraments
could not alone effect one's salvation; one cannot choose salvation, for that
is the privilege of God alone.
•
All features of salvation are determined by God's sovereignty, including
choosing those who will be saved and those who will receive God's
irresistible grace.
• The Puritans distinguished between "justification," or the gift of God's grace
given to the elect, and "sanctification," the holy behavior that supposedly
resulted when an individual had been saved; according to The English
Literatures of America, "Sanctification is evidence of salvation, but does not
cause it" (434).
TYPOLOGY
• Puritan Typology : http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/typology.htm
•
•
•
Based on an ancient hermeneutic method (Hebrews 10:1), typology is the interpretation of
Old Testament events, persons, and ceremonies as signs which prefigured Christ's fulfillment
and new covenant with the apostolic church.
The concepts arose from those of the skia (shadow) and typos (type).
Typology involves identification both of a type or figura, a figure, concept, ceremony, or
event as an Old Testament precursor, and an anti-type, a New Testament historical figure or
event that follows and fulfills the promise of the type.
– The belief that God’s intentions are present in human action and in
natural phenomenon.
– Failure to understand these intentions are human limitation.
– Puritans believe in cyclical or repetitive history; they uses “types”Moses prefigures Jesus, Jonah’s patience is reflective in Jesus' ordeal on
the cross, and Moses’ journey out of Egypt is played out in the Pilgrim’s
crossing of the Atlantic.
– God wrath and reward are also present in natural phenomena like
flooding, bountiful harvest, the invasion of locusts, and the lightening
striking a home
Manifest Destiny
• The concept of manifest destiny is as old as
the first New England settlements. Without
using the words, John Winthrop articulated
the concept in his famous sermon, the
Arabella Covenant (1630), when he said:
“…for we must consider that we shall be as a
city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are
upon us;…
• Winthrop exhorts his listeners to carry on
God’s mission and to set a shining example for
the rest of the world. From this beginning,
the concept has had religious, social,
economic, and political conquencenses.
• The words manifest destiny were first used by
the editor John L. O’Sullivan in 1845
TULIP
• T - Total Depravity (also known as Total
– Inability and Original Sin)
• Man is naturally unable to exercise free will, since through Adam's fall he has suffered hereditary
corruption. Evil was a palpable presence in the Puritans' world, and it was often symbolized by the
struggle between light and darkness. In this system, it was impossible to find disillusioned Puritans,
for they believed that there was no horror that man could not commit.
• U - Unconditional Election
• Election manifests itself through God's wisdom to elect those to be saved, despite their inability to
perform saving works. Only a chosen few are so elected, and simply being a church member did not
necessarily signify election.
• L- Limited Atonement (also known as Particular
– Atonement)
• Man's hereditary corruption is partially atoned for by Christ, and this atonement is provided to the
elect through the Holy Spirit. This limited atonement gives them the power to attempt to obey God's
will as revealed through the Bible
• I- Irresistible Grace
• Grace was a "motion of the heart" that was God's gift to the elect-unconditional, irresistible, and
inexorable. It came to each directly and could not be taken away. It promised "ecstatic intimacy with
the divine" or "soul liberty." When Winthrop talks about liberty, this is the sort that he counts on his
audience recalling.
• P - Perseverance of the Saints (also known as Once
– Saved Always Saved)
• Those who are predetermined as elect inevitably persevere in the path of holiness.
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
• http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/calvi
n.htm
• Calvinism in New England Puritan Culture
The Style of Puritan Writing
• 1. Protest – against ornateness; reverence for
the Bible
• 2. Purposiveness – there was a purpose to
Puritan writing : The Function as described in
the previous slide
• 3. Puritan writing reflected the character and
scope of the reading public, which was literate
and well-grounded in religion
Reasons for Puritan Literacy
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.
Common Themes
• 1. Idealism – both religious and political
• 2. Pragmaticism – practicality and
purposiveness
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 leader of dissent – Anne Hutchinson, Roger
Williams.
• 6. The presence of the frontier- concept of self-reliance,
individualism, and optimism.
• 7. Change in political conditions – MA becomes 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
Visible Signs of 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 ands sleeping
during sermons
5. Decay in the 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
Some Aspects of the Puritan Legacy: each has positive
and negative implications
• 1. The Need for moral justification for private,
public, and governmental acts.
• 2. The Questing for Freedom – personal,
political, economic, and social.
• 3. the Puritan work ethic.
• 4. Elegiac verse – morbid fascination with
death
• 5. The city upon a hill – concept of manifest
destiny
Here are a few key matters:
• * Puritans viewed the Bible as God’s covenant with them;
they saw themselves as a Chosen People and identified
strongly with the tribes of Israel in the Book of Exodus. In
reading both Testaments, they included that God, though
sometimes arbitrary in his power, is neither malicious nor
capricious.
• * Doers of evil suffer and are destroyed; true believers and
doers of good may suffer as well, as worldly misfortune as
both a test of faith and a signifier of God’s will.
• * Covenant theology taught that although no human being
can ever know for certain whether or not he or she is
among the saved, the only hope lay in rigorous study of
Scripture; relentless moral self-examination, and active,
whole-hearted membership in these congregations
Issues
• 1. With no central religious authority, and an
expectation that each member of the community
should encounter Scripture and theological prose
firsthand, New England Puritanism would be
strongly influenced by a drive toward solidarity
and consensus and by a championing of
individual thought. These conflicting values
would become clear in the collision between the
Colony’s elders and Anne Hutchinson, less than
ten years after the founding of Boston.
Issues
• 2. An emphasis on individual responsibility, on
a direct and personal relationship with God,
and on the acquisition of knowledge in
anticipation (or hope) of the coming of Divine
Grace could be a powerful force for the
education of women, and eventually for their
political and social equality.
Issues
• 3. A belief that salvation required, and would be
signified by, achievement of absolute integrity
among faith, worldly conduct, private life, and
the spoken and written word would eventually
figure centrally in the rise of abolitionist
sentiment: race slavery becomes not an
economic expediency or a social problem to be
overlooked and eventually remedied but a mortal
sin, threatening the moral condition of the
society and every individual within it. The ,longterm effects of this kind of thinking are
enormous.
Issues
• 4. A belief in a special destiny and a conviction
that what was unfolding in New England was
the last and best hope of the Christian world.
Cataclysmic changes in London in the middle
of the 17th century and the erosion of
solidarity in the colony after the Restoration
(1660) and with the passage of years would
bring those convictions into crisis at the
century’s end.
Issues
• 5. A special emphasis on reading correctly- not
only holy texts but commentaries and the
events of ordinary life. The New England
Puritans were an intellectual people who
believed firmly in portents, symbols, and the
significance of all that happened in private
and public life.
Of Plymouth Plantation
• An excellent foundation for the study of
colonial American Literature, as it offers a
thorough portrait of hopes and expectations
central to the new England Puritan mind, and
it shows us how an idea of destiny, and an
expectation that all worldly experience
William Bradford
• 1550-1657
• Elected gov of Plymouth in the MA Bay Colony
after death of John Carver
• He was deeply pious, self-educated and had
learned several languages, including Hebrew,
in order to “see with his own eyes the ancient
oracles of god in their native beauty.”
William Bradford
•
Born: March, 1590 - Yorkshire, England
Died: May 9, 1657 - Plymouth, MA s a member of
the Separatist movement within Puritanism,
Bradford migrated to Holland in 1609 in search of
religious freedom and lived 11 years in Leiden.
•
In 1620 he helped organize the Mayflower's
expedition to the New World.
•
To bind the group into a political body, Bradford
helped draft the important Mayflower Compact en
route to America.
•
Once on land, he helped select the site for the new
colony.
•
In 1621, after the colony's first, disastrous winter,
he was unanimously elected governor, and he
served in that position for some 30 years between
1621 and 1656.
•
His remarkable tact, honesty, and political ability
proved indispensable in assuring the colony's
survival, and he helped avert numerous potential
disasters.
•
He was instrumental in establishing and fostering
the principles of self-government and religious
freedom that characterized later American colonial
government.
William Bradford
• His participation in the migration to Holland
and the Mayflower voyage to Plymouth, and
his duties as governor, made him ideally
suited to be the first historian of his colony.
• His history, Of Plymouth Plantation (1651), is a
clear and compelling account of the colony’s
beginning.
• Though lacking in formal education, Bradford
possessed native literary ability.
• His vivid account of the early settlement,
History of Plimoth Plantation, 1620-1647, not
published in full until 200 years after his death
(1856), has been a unique source of
information about the Puritans' voyage and
the challenges that faced the settlers.
On Plymouth Plantation
• His description of the first view of America is
justly famous:
• Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of
troubles…they had now no friends to welcome them nor
inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no
houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for
succor…savage barbarians…were readier to fill their sides
with arrows than otherwise. And for the reason it was
winter, and they that know the winters of that country
know the to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and
fierce storms…all stand upon them with a weatherbeaten
face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets,
represented a wild savage hue
The “Mayflower Compact”
• Bradford also recorded the first document of
colonial self-governance in the English New
World, the “Mayflower Compact,” drawn up
while the Pilgrims were still on board ship.
• The compact was a harbinger of the
Declaration of Independence to come a
century and a half later
Mayflower Compact – What is it?
•
The Mayflower Compact is a written agreement composed by a consensus
of the new Settlers arriving at New Plymouth in November of 1620. They
had traveled across the ocean on the ship Mayflower which was anchored
in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The
Mayflower Compact was drawn up with fair and equal laws, for the
general good of the settlement and with the will of the majority. The
Mayflower’s passengers knew that the New World’s earlier settlers failed
due to a lack of government. They hashed out the content and eventually
composed the Compact for the sake of their own survival.
All 41 of the adult male members on the Mayflower signed the Compact.
Being the first written laws for the new land, the Compact determined
authority within the settlement and was the observed as such until 1691.
This established that the colony (mostly persecuted Separatists), was to be
free of English law. It was devised to set up a government from within
themselves and was written by those to be governed.
Mayflower Compact – What did it say?
The original document is said to have been lost, but the writings of William Bradford’s
journal Of Plymouth Plantation and in Edward Winslow’s Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of
the Pilgrims at Plymouth are in agreement and accepted as accurate. The Mayflower
Compact reads:
"In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of
our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of God, of England, France and
Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, e&. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and
Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to
plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and
mutually in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves
together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and
Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame,
such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time,
as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto
which we promise all due submission and obedience. In Witness whereof we have
hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of
our Sovereign Lord, King James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of
Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620."
Mayflower Compact – Who signed it
and why?
One of the first lists of the Mayflower Compact’s signers was provided by
William Bradford’s nephew, Nathaniel Morton. The names are published in
his 1669 New England’s Memorial. They are also posted by the Avalon
Project of Yale University. Some of the more familiar names includes are
those such as: John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, William
Brewster, Isaac Allerton, Myles Standish, and John Alden.
When creating the Mayflower Compact, the signers believed that
covenants were not only to be honored between God and man, but also
between each other. They had always honored covenants as part of their
righteous integrity and agreed to be bound by this same principle with the
Compact. John Adams and many historians have referred to the
Mayflower Compact as the foundation of the U.S. Constitution written
more than 150 later.
The Mayflower Compact
by William Bradford
November 11, 1620
• The Mayflower Compact was drawn up on the Mayflower, under
these circumstances as described by Gov. William Bradford:
• "This day, before we came to harbour, observing some not well
affected to unity and concord, but gave some appearance of
faction, it was thought good there should be an association and
agreement, that we should combine together in one body, and to
submit to such government and governors as we should by
common consent agree to make and choose, and set our hands to
this that follows, word for word. . ."
•
Signers
• Mr. John Carver, Mr. William Bradford, Mr Edward Winslow, Mr.
William Brewster. Isaac Allerton, Myles Standish,
John Alden, John Turner, Francis Eaton, James Chilton, John
Craxton , John Billington, Joses Fletcher,
John Goodman, Mr. Samuel Fuller, Mr. Christopher Martin, Mr.
William Mullins, Mr. William White,
Mr. Richard Warren, John Howland, Mr. Steven Hopkins, Digery
Priest, Thomas Williams,
Gilbert Winslow, Edmund Margesson, Peter Brown, Richard
Britteridge, George Soule,
Edward Tilly, John Tilly, Francis Cooke, Thomas Rogers, Thomas
Tinker,
John Ridgdale, Edward Fuller, Richard Clark, Richard Gardiner,
Mr. John Allerton, Thomas English, Edward Doten, Edward Liester.
Puritan Search for Order
• The Puritan's religious beliefs facilitated the
rapid establishment of stable communities
• Nearly ¾ of Puritan settlers migrated in family
groups that included wives and daughters
• New Englanders soon began to reproduce
• They had high and rising rates of childbirth (1st
generation Plymouth women bore an average of
7.8 children, the majority own whom lived to
adulthood.)
• The Puritan ideology, the family stood as a
lynchpin of social order, a value that was
magnified in the frontier conditions of the New
world as the colonists encounters physical
hardships, disease and persistent conflicts with
Natives
• They embraced hierarchical notions of family
– each person’s role clearly delineated
• The family unit – so crucial
• Shaped by religious ideas
• MA colonies followed the English principle of
FEME COVERT: Widows had more
opportunities to control their wealth
• Marriage was viewed as a civil contract rather
than as a religious sacrament – permitted
divorce and allowed remarriage
•
•
•
•
Divorce was permitted
Women did not gain power in marriage
Women were subordinate to men
New England colonies mandated by law that
all children be taught to read, and all women
did have a high literacy rate. Yet, rosters
indicate that few girls attended school; those
who did were not encouraged to learn to
write
• Few women wrote diaries or book
• Of all the 911 books produced in the 17th
century New England, only 4 were written by
women
• One of these, the most famous was Anne
Bradstreet’s Several Poems Complied with
Great Variety of Wit and Learning (1678) and
Mary Rowlandson’s: A True History of the
Captivity and Restoration of Mary
Rowlandson (1677)
• Puritan women many have shared w ,men the
right to be members of the church once they
satisfactorily testified to their salvation, clergy
and other male community leaders
periodically punished or banished heretical
women who challenged male authority: Anne
Hutchinson
The MA BAY Experiment
• 1630 – the Puritans came to the New World and
started the MA Bay Experiment: seventeen ships
and 1,000 people. It was the largest single
migration of its kind in the 17th century.
• Unlike Plymouth, The MA BAY migration quickly
produced several different settlements: Boston,
Charlestown, Newtown (Cambridge), Roxbury,
Dorchester, Ipswich, Concord, Sudbury, …
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
• The Massachusetts Bay
Colony
• Founded as a business
venture
Flagship Arbella arrives 1630
Leader - John Winthrop
Settlers are mostly Puritans
or Congregational Puritans
"The Arbella Covenant“
clearly establishes
a religious and theocratic
settlement,
The Massachusetts Bay Colony exhibited all
of the following characteristics:
•
•
•
•
1. it was more Puritan than Separatist
2. it included family groups from the onset
3. it quickly produced several settlements
4. it developed a small fur trade w the local
Indians
John Winthrop
• Dominated colonial politics: 1630 Sails for New
England; writes first journal entry of Bay Colony;
delivers his lay-sermon, "Modell of Christian Charity,"
aboard the Arbella.
• 1634 Voted out of the governorship.
• 1637 Reelected governor.
• 1640 Voted out of governorship.
• 1642 Reelected governor.
• 1645 Stands trial, having been accused for
overstepping authority.
• 1646 Reelected governor and serves until his death.
Relations between the settlers and
the Natives
• New England Settlers believed that the Indians
were:
• 1. were a threat to the existence of a godly
community
• 2. hindered migration into the Connecticut
valley
• 3. should be civilized and converted
• 4 should serve as partners in trading ventures
• Relationships between early Plymouth settlers
and local Indians were peaceful, since the
local Indians were weaker than the settlers…
The Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation benefited from
their relationship with the Indians in that:
• 1. They settled on land that had already been
cleared by Indians
• 2. the Indians in the area were too weak to
cause them much difficulty
• 3. a few Indians showed them how to gather
seafood and cultivate corn
• 4. the Pilgrims were less hostile to the Indians
than the Virginians
Roger Williams
•
Roger Williams (ca. 1603-83), religious leader and one of the founders of Rhode Island, was the son of a wellto-do London businessman.
•
Educated at Cambridge (A.B., 1627) he became a clergyman and in 1630 sailed for Massachusetts (the LYON).
•
He refused a call to the church of Boston because it had not formally broken with the Church of England, but
after two invitations he became the assistant pastor, later pastor, of the church at Salem.
•
He questioned the right of the colonists to take the Indians' land from them merely on the legal basis of the
royal charter and in other ways ran afoul of the oligarchy then ruling Massachusetts.
•
In 1635 he was found guilty of spreading "new authority of magistrates" and was ordered to be banished from
the colony. He lived briefly with friendly Indians and then, in 1636, founded Providence in what was to be the
colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. His religious views led him to become briefly a Baptist,
later a Seeker.
•
In 1644, while he was in England getting a charter for his colony from Parliament, he wrote the work from
which this dialogue is taken. During much of his later life he was engaged in polemics on political and religious
questions.
•
He was an important figure in the intellectual life of his time
Anne Bradstreet
• Born in North Hampton, England 1612
• Parents: Thomas Dudley and Dorothy Yorke =
Noble heritage
– Dudley was the leader of the volunteer soldiers in
the English reformation and Elizabethan
settlement
Anne Bradstreet
• At age 16 she married Simon Bradstreet – he
was 25 and an assistant in the MA Bay Co and
son of a Puritan minister
• Anne and her family emigrated to America in
1630 on the Arabella
– She found this journey very very hard – expresses
this is her writing
• Anne was well educated: tutored in history,
several languages and literature
Anne Bradstreet
•
•
•
•
•
John Winthrop = Governor
Thomas Dudley = Deputy Governor
Simon Bradstreet = Chief Administrator
They relied on God
Anne had poor health (sm. Pox earlier in life and would
suffer throughout)
• Anne and Simon had 8 children
• Their home went up in flames at one point –
everything gone, homeless
• But hard work and perservance – through their faith
would seem them through
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)
• One of the most important figures in
American Literature
• She is considered by many to be the first
American poet
• Her book The Tenth Muse lately Sprung Up in
America was the 1st book written by a women
to be published in the United States
• Her work serves as a document of the struggles
of a Puritan wife against the hardships of New
England and Colonial life…
• A testament to plight of the women of the age…
• Her life was a constant struggle…
• Adapting to a new land – death – fear – illness –
Indians…
• Her faith was exemplary…
• She loves her husband and her children…
• Her poems were written mainly during periods of
loneness…
• Her husband is often away on political matters…
• She was well educated…
• She passed that education down to her children
Puritan ideology of Anne Bradstreet
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
* found in her poetry
* deeply devoted to God and her family
*Humility
* indifference to material wealth
* her spirituality
* She was a positive role model
* her strong intuition
* constant fascination with the human mind,
spirit, and inner guidance
Characteristics of her poems
• *Her style is deceptively simple, yet speaks of a woman of
high intelligence and ideals…very much in love with her
husband and family and has unconditional faith…
• *Lyrical and logical
• *Self-effacing “apology” (art claiming artlessness) gradually
becomes more authoritative poetic persona (bold assertion
followed by retraction)
• * Didactic
• *Pride in ability to instruct and experience life
• * distaste for dualism and hierarchy; preference for balance
• *attachment to nature and the body (even questioning
God)
• *Self-exploration through historic and mythic heroines
• *Dwelling on the domestic as authoritative
• *Language and imagery often direct, relatively simple
The Half-Way Covenant
•
The children of first-generation believers were admitted to limited membership in the Congregational church,
on the grounds that as children of the elect, they would undoubtedly experience conversion and become full
members of the church.
•
Not all underwent a conversion experience, however, thus leaving in doubt the future of their children, the
grandchildren of the original church members.
•
Drafted by Richard Mather and approved in 1662, the Half-way Covenant proposed that second-generation
members be granted the same privilege of baptism (but not communion) as had been granted to the first
generation.
•
According to Norman Grabo, "This encouraged individual congregations to baptize the infant children of church
members but not to admit them to full membership until they were at least 14 years old" and could profess
conversion.
•
"The partaking of the Lord's Supper became a lure to struggling half-way members to discover their right to full
membership and a public sign of the purest in the congregation."
•
Richard, and, later, Increase Mather supported it, as did Edward Taylor; but Solomon Stoddard from
Northampton argued that, according to the Half-Way Covenant, no man was permitted to partake of the Lord's
Supper until he had certain knowledge and assurance of salvation; without this knowledge, attendance at the
sacrament was damning.
•
Stoddard said that no man could know he was saved with absolute certainty; thus all well-behaved Christians
should be admitted to the sacrament in hopes that they might secure saving grace or be converted by it. (Grabo
32)
Early American Captivity Narratives
• http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/captive.htm
• According to Richard Slotkin,
– "In [a captivity narrative] a single individual, usually a woman, stands
passively under the strokes of evil, awaiting rescue by the grace of God.
– The sufferer represents the whole, chastened body of Puritan society; and the
temporary bondage of the captive to the Indian is dual paradigm-- of the
bondage of the soul to the flesh and the temptations arising from original sin,
and of the self-exile of the English Israel from England.
– In the Indian's devilish clutches, the captive had to meet and reject the
temptation of Indian marriage and/or the Indian's "cannibal" Eucharist.
– To partake of the Indian's love or of his equivalent of bread and wine was to
debase, to un-English the very soul.
– The captive's ultimate redemption by the grace of Christ and the efforts of the
Puritan magistrates is likened to the regeneration of the soul in conversion.
– The ordeal is at once threatful of pain and evil and promising of ultimate
salvation.
– Through the captive's proxy, the promise of a similar salvation could be
offered to the faithful among the reading public, while the captive's torments
remained to harrow the hearts of those not yet awakened to their fallen
nature" (Regeneration Through Violence)
Rhetorical Purposes
• Religious expression Justification of westward
expansion Nineteenth-century:
– cultural symbol of American national heritage
Popular literature Reinforcement of stereotypes
– a. Spanish: Indians as brutish beasts
b. French: Indians as souls needing redemption
c. English in Virginia: innocent exotics
d. Puritans: Satanic threat to religious utopia
Themes and Types
• Fears of cannibalism
• Fears of scalping
• Hunter-predator myth: captive as cultural mediator between
savagery and civilization
• Judea capta, for Puritans: Israel suffering under Babylonian
captivity.
• Freudian view: captivity becomes adoption
• Myths
– a. Myth of Love in the Woods (Pocahontas and John Smith)
– b. Myth of Good Companions in the Wilderness (Cooper's Natty
Bumppo and Chingachgook)
– c. Myth of White Woman with a Tomahawk (Hannah Dustan;
inverts Pocahontas; kills 10 Indians and scalps them when she
escapes.)
Mary Rowlandson
• Was born circa 1637-1638 in England.
• With her parents John and Joan White, she sailed for
Salem in 1639.
• Joseph Rowlandson became a minister in 1654 and two
years later he and Mary were married.
• They had a child, Mary, who lived for three years; their
other children were Joseph, b. 1661; Mary, b. 1665;
Sarah, b. 1669. At the time of their capture, the
children were 14, 10, and 6.
• In 1675 Joseph Rowlandson went to Boston to beg for help
from the Massachusetts General Assembly, during which
period Mary Rowlandson was captured.
• After her redemption, the couple lived in Boston and then
moved 1677 to Wethersfield, Connecticut.
• Joseph Rowlandson died 24 November 1678 after preaching a
powerful fast-day jeremiad.
• Mary Rowlandson remarried 6 Aug 1679 to Captain Samuel
Talcott.
• He died in 1691; she lived until 1710.
• Disgrace later came to the family: her son Joseph got his
brother-in-law drunk and sold him into servitude in Virginia.
• While a prisoner, Mary Rowlandson travelled some
150 miles, from Lancaster to Menamaset then
north to Northfield and across the Connecticut river
to meet with King Philip/Metacomet himself,
sachem of the Wampanoags.
• Next she traveled up into southwestern New
Hampshire, south to Menamaset, and north to
Mount Wachusett.
• According to Kathryn Derounian-Stodola, "Introducing
her work in all four 1682 editions was an anonymous
preface to the reader, signed only 'per Amicum' (By a
Friend), but almost certainly written by Increase
Mather.
• In 1681, Mather had proposed to a group of Puritan
ministers that they collect stories of 'special
providences' concerning New England to be evaluated,
sorted, and eventually anthologized.
• Quite probably Rowlandson's narrative was among the
providential accounts he received, but owing to its
length, local currency, and intrinsic worth, he may have
suggested separate publication and agreed to help. . ."
Forms of Puritan Rhetoric: The
Jeremiad and the Conversion
Narrative
http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/jeremiad.htm
•
• According to Emory Elliott, Thomas Hooker (1586-1647) "favored a more liberal
membership policy [than his rival John Cotton], and he devised an elaborate
preparation process that involved precise psychological stages on the way to
conversion. The six essential stages of this morphology of conversion were
contrition, humiliation, vocation, implantation, exaltation, and possession; and
these he subdivided further. He required that a prospective member demonstrate to
him and then to the congregation a successful passage through these stages" (Cambridge
History of American Literature, Vol. 1, 201).
• Contrition. Man should look into the Law of God and make an examination of his
life and state according to the Law.
• Humiliation. Conviction of conscience by which seeker realizes that he is under sin.
• Vocation. Despair of salvation, in respect to strength of self and other creatures.
• Implantation. True humiliation of heart, grief and fear because of sin. Confession.
• Exaltation. First entrance into the state of saving grace.
• Possession. Awareness of presence of faith.