This blog is about American literature, which describes some salient facts or data from this period. Subsequently detailed the Puritan Period and one of his best-known authors together his most famous works.

AMERICAN LITERATURE

American literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States. Therefore, its literary tradition begins as linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, unique American characteristics and the breadth of its production usually now cause it to be considered a separate path and tradition.

COLONIAL LITERATURE

Owing to the large immigration to Boston in the 1630s, the high articulation of Puritan cultural ideals, and the early establishment of a college and a printing press in Cambridge, the New England colonies have often been regarded as the center of early American literature. However, the first European settlements in North America had been founded elsewhere many years earlier. Towns older than Boston include the Spanish settlements at Saint Augustine and Santa Fe, the Dutch settlements at Albany and New Amsterdam, as well as the English colony of Jamestown in present-day Virginia. During the colonial period, the printing press was active in many areas, from Cambridge and Boston to New York, Philadelphia, and Annapolis.

The dominance of the English language was hardly inevitable. The first item printed in Pennsylvania was in German and was the largest book printed in any of the colonies before the American Revolution. Spanish and French had two of the strongest colonial literary traditions in the areas that now comprise the United States, and discussions of early American literature commonly include texts by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and Samuel de Champlain alongside English language texts by Thomas Harriot and John Smith. Moreover, we are now aware of the wealth of oral literary traditions already existing on the continent among the numerous different Native American groups. Political events, however, would eventually make English the lingua franca for the colonies at large as well as the literary language of choice. For instance, when the English conquered New Amsterdam in 1664, they renamed it New York and changed the administrative language from Dutch to English.

From 1696 to 1700, only about 250 separate items were issued from the major printing presses in the American colonies. This is a small number compared to the output of the printers in London at the time. However, printing was established in the American colonies before it was allowed in most of England. In England restrictive laws had long confined printing to four locations: London, York, Oxford, and Cambridge. Because of this, the colonies ventured into the modern world earlier than their provincial English counterparts.

Back then, some of the American literature were pamphlets and writings extolling the benefits of the colonies to both a European and colonist audience. Captain John Smith could be considered the first American author with his works: A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as Hath Happened in Virginia... (1608) and The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624). Other writers of this manner included Daniel Denton, Thomas Ashe, William Penn, George Percy, William Strachey, Daniel Coxe, Gabriel Thomas, and John Lawson.

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE

Though its exact parameters remain debatable, from the early 1970s to the present day the most salient literary movement has been postmodernism. Thomas Pynchon, a seminal practitioner of the form, drew in his work on modernist fixtures such as temporal distortion, unreliable narrators, and internal monologue and coupled them with distinctly postmodern techniques such as metafiction, ideogrammatic characterization, unrealistic names (Oedipa Maas, Benny Profane, etc.), absurdist plot elements and hyperbolic humor, deliberate use of anachronisms and archaisms, a strong focus on postcolonial themes, and a subversive commingling of high and low culture. In 1973, he published Gravity's Rainbow, a leading work in this genre, which won the National Book Award and was unanimously nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction that year. His other major works include his debut, V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Mason & Dixon (1997), and Against the Day (2006).

Toni Morrison at the Miami Book Fair International of 1986
Toni Morrison, the most recent American recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, writing in a distinctive lyrical prose style, published her controversial debut novel, The Bluest Eye, to widespread critical acclaim in 1970. Coming on the heels of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the novel, widely studied in American schools, includes an elaborate description of incestuous rape and explores the conventions of beauty established by a historically racist society, painting a portrait of a self-immolating black family in search of beauty in whiteness. Since then, Morrison has experimented with lyric fantasy, as in her two best-known later works, Song of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; along these lines, critic Harold Bloom has drawn favorable comparisons to Virginia Woolf, and the Nobel committee to "Faulkner and to the Latin American tradition [of magical realism]." Beloved was chosen in a 2006 survey conducted by the New York Times as the most important work of fiction of the last 25 years.

PURITAN PERIOD

The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries, including, but not limited to, English Calvinists. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England. The designation "Puritan" is often used in the sense that hedonism and puritanism are antonyms.[1] Historically, the word was used pejoratively to characterize the Protestant group as extremists similar to the Cathari of France, and according to Thomas Fuller in his Church History dated back to 1564, Archbishop Matthew Parker of that time used it and "precisian" with the sense of modern "stickler".

Puritans were blocked from changing the established church from within, and severely restricted in England by laws controlling the practice of religion, but their views were taken by the emigration of congregations to the Netherlands and later New England, and by evangelical clergy to Ireland and later into Wales, and were spread into lay society by preaching and parts of the educational system, particularly certain colleges of the University of Cambridge. They took on distinctive views on clerical dress and in opposition to the episcopal system, particularly after the 1619 conclusions of the Synod of Dort were resisted by the English bishops. They largely adopted Sabbatarian views in the 17th century, and were influenced by millennialism.

In alliance with the growing commercial world, the parliamentary opposition to the royal prerogative, and in the late 1630s with the Scottish Presbyterians with whom they had much in common, the Puritans became a major political force in England and came to power as a result of the First English Civil War (1642–46). After the English Restoration of 1660 and the 1662 Uniformity Act, almost all Puritan clergy left the Church of England, some becoming nonconformist ministers, and the nature of the movement in England changed radically, though it retained its character for much longer in New England.

Puritans by definition felt that the English Reformation had not gone far enough, and that the Church of England was tolerant of practices which they associated with the Catholic Church. They formed into and identified with various religious groups advocating greater "purity" of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and group piety. Puritans adopted a Reformed theology and in that sense were Calvinists (as many of their earlier opponents were, too), but also took note of radical views critical of Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in Geneva. In church polity, some advocated for separation from all other Christians, in favor of autonomous gathered churches. These separatist and independent strands of Puritanism became prominent in the 1640s, when the supporters of a presbyterian polity in the Westminster Assembly were unable to forge a new English national church.

 PURITANISM

The accession of James I brought the Millenary Petition, a Puritan manifesto of 1603 for reform of the English church, but James wanted a new religious settlement along different lines. He called the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, and heard the views of four prominent Puritan leaders including Chaderton there, but largely sided with his bishops. Well informed by his education and Scottish upbringing on theological matters, he dealt shortly with the peevish legacy of Elizabethan Puritanism, and tried to pursue an eirenic religious policy in which he was arbiter. Many of his episcopal appointments were Calvinists, notably James Montague who was an influential courtier. Puritans still opposed much of the Catholic summation in the Church of England, notably the Book of Common Prayer, but also the use of non-secular vestments (cap and gown) during services, the sign of the Cross in baptism, and kneeling to receive Holy Communion. Although the Puritan movement was subjected to repression by some of the bishops under both Elizabeth and James, other bishops were more tolerant, and in many places, individual ministers were able to omit disliked portions of the Book of Common Prayer.

The Puritan movement of Jacobean times became distinctive by adaptation and compromise, with the emergence of "semi-separatism", "moderate puritanism", the writings of William Bradshaw who adopted the term "Puritan" as self-identification, and the beginnings of congregationalism. Most Puritans of this period were non-separating and remained within the Church of England, and Separatists who left the Church of England altogether were numerically much fewer.

1564-1660: The Era of Puritanism

1564	The word "Puritan" appears for the first time. The Puritans are Calvinists, legalists, and name-callers. They are very serious, and oppose most things that are fun for themselves or others. They want: a skilled, educated preaching ministry, based on the Bible as few ceremonies in church as Biblically possible (no surplice, no signing of the cross) abolition of the traditional role of bishop, and replacement of the episcopate by a presbyterian system one legal government church, controlled by Puritans. (Contrast the Separatists.)
1569	Thomas Cartwright of Cambridge outlines the Puritan program.
1575	The "Geneva Bible", an inexpensive edition with Calvinist notes, is published. (Shakespeare quotes this version.)
1581	Robert Browne's "Treatise of Reformation without Tarrying for Any". This will be the manifesto of the Puritans who found the Massachusetts Bay colony.
1581	Richard Hooker ordained priest; his anti-Puritan book "Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity" reflects natural-law and rationalist ideas then popular.
1590	William Shakespeare ridicules Puritans in his characterizations of Falstaff, Malvolio, Flavius, and others.
1593	Puritan assemblies and activities outlawed. A few Separatists are hanged.
1603	Elizabeth I succeeded by James I.
1604	Book of Common Prayer revised. The only change is an expanded catechism. The sacraments are "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace". At the eucharist, "the Body and Blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful".
1605	"Gunpowder plot" by Roman Catholic fanatics seeking to blow up Parliament.
1611	King James Version of the Bible. Most of the language is Tyndale's.
1618	James I's "Declaration of Sports" is read in all churches to encourage healthy fun and games on Sundays. This outrages the Puritans.
1622	John Donne, priest and metaphysical poet, becomes Dean of St. Paul's cathedral, London.
1625	James I is succeeded by Charles I; his colorful court fills with refugees, including Roman Catholic counter-reformation types.
1625	Christopher Wren begins rebuilding St. Paul's Cathedral.
1626	Nicholas Ferrar founds religious community of Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, England.
1628	The narrow-minded William Laud is made archbishop of London. He oversees the persecution of Puritans.
1633	George Herbert's poems published posthumously as "The Temple".
1637	Scottish Prayer Book published. (This is unpopular in Scotland, though it does call priests "presbyters". It will be the basis for the future American Prayer Book.)
1638	The Scots, crying "Popery", excommunicate their bishops. This results in war.
1640	Charles I calls Parliament to approve funds for the war with Scotland; Parliament instead raises an army against the king. In the civil wars that follow, Oliver Cromwell leads the "New Model Army" rebels and becomes Lord Protector; John Milton is his Latin Secretary. Puritan morality becomes the law. (Today, Cromwell might be considered a Baptist; he says, sincerely, "I had rather that Mahometanism were permitted among us that that one of God's children should be persecuted.")
1643	Westminster Assembly drafts its "Confession", the major Presbyterian statement of belief.
1645	William Laud is beheaded by the Puritans.
1649	Cromwell and his government behead ("martyr") King Charles I.
1649	"Diggers" (communists), "Levellers" (egalitarians) and "Ranters" (atheists, hedonists) cause problems for the Puritan regime. (The latter are targets of the new "Blasphemy Act".)

Conflict within the Church of England under Charles I

James I was succeeded by his son Charles I of England in 1625. In the year before becoming King, he married Henrietta-Marie de Bourbon of France, a Roman Catholic daughter of the convert Henry IV of France, who refused to attend the coronation of her husband in a non-Catholic cathedral.[8] She had no tolerance for Puritans. At the same time, William Laud, Bishop of London, was becoming increasingly powerful as an advisor to Charles. Laud viewed Puritans as a schismatic threat to orthodoxy in the church. With the Queen and Laud among his closest advisors, Charles pursued policies to eliminate the religious distinctiveness and "excesses" of Puritans. Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, and moved the Church of England away from Puritanism, rigorously enforcing the law against ministers who deviated from the Book of Common Prayer or who refused to read the Book of Sports after its re-issue in 1633, a shibboleth for the Sabbatarian views spread by Nicholas Bownde and Nicholas Byfield.

Charles relied largely on the Star Chamber and Court of High Commission to implement his policies, courts under the control of the King, not the Parliament, capable of convicting and imprisoning Puritans under prerogative. He adapted them as instruments of suppression, following the juristic methods of Elizabeth I in dealing in the 1590s with the supporters of Thomas Cartwright. The Puritan movement in England then allied itself with the cause of "England's ancient liberties"; the unpopularity of Laud was a major factor leading to the English Civil War, during which Puritans formed the backbone of the parliamentarian forces. Laud was arrested in 1641 and executed in 1645, after a lengthy trial in which a large mass of evidence was brought, tending to represent him as obstructive of the "godly" and amounting to the whole, detailed Puritan case against the royal church policy of the preceding decade.

Cultural Consequences

Some strong religious views common to Puritans had direct impacts on culture. The opposition to acting as public performance, typefied by William Prynne's Histriomastix, was not a concern with drama as a form. John Milton wrote Samson Agonistes as verse drama, and indeed had at an early stage contemplated writing Paradise Lost in that form. N. H. Keeble writes:

“...when Milton essayed drama, it was with explicit Pauline authority and neither intended for the stage nor in the manner of the contemporary theatre.”

But the sexualisation of Restoration theatre was attacked as strongly as ever, by Thomas Gouge, as Keeble points out. Puritans eliminated the use of musical instruments in their religious services, for theological and practical reasons. Church organs were commonly damaged or destroyed in the Civil War period, for example an axe being taken to the organ of Worcester Cathedral in 1642.

Education for the masses was so they could read the Bible for themselves. Educated pastors could read the Bible in its original languages of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, as well as church tradition and scholarly works, which were most commonly written in Latin. Most of the leading Puritan divines studied at the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge before seeking ordination.



Social Consequences and Family Life

The Snake in the Grass or Satan Transform'd to an Angel of Light, title page, ca. 1660
Puritan culture emphasized the need for self-examination and the strict accounting for one’s feelings as well as one’s deeds. This was the centre of evangelical experience, which women in turn placed at the heart of their work to sustain family life. The words of the Bible, as they interpreted them, were the origin of many Puritan cultural ideals, especially regarding the roles of men and women in the community. While both sexes carried the stain of original sin, for a girl, original sin suggested more than the roster of Puritan character flaws. Eve’s corruption, in Puritan eyes, extended to all women, and justified marginalizing them within churches' hierarchical structures[citation needed] . An example is the different ways that men and women were made to express their conversion experiences. For full membership, the Puritan church insisted not only that its congregants lead godly lives and exhibit a clear understanding of the main tenets of their Christian faith, but they also must demonstrate that they had experienced true evidence of the workings of God’s grace in their souls. Only those who gave a convincing account of such a conversion could be admitted to full church membership. While women were typically not permitted to speak in church, they were allowed to engage in religious discussions outside it, and they could narrate their conversions.

WILLIAM BRADFORD

BIOGRAPHY

William Bradford, born in 1590, was the only son of a yeoman family (middle class farmers) in Austerfield, England, but his parents died while he was still quite young. A sickly boy, he learned to read and loved learning. At age sixteen, he heard a controversial preacher teach the "Puritan Principles" of personal holiness and separation of church and state. Defying his uncles, who forbade him to associate with these "Separatists," William began attending a Puritan congregation at Scrooby, where he met Elder William Brewster, who became the father and mentor William had never had.

King James I made life difficult for these "reformers." When Brewster and others were arrested and fined for being "disobedient in religion," the Scrooby congregation moved to Leyden, Holland, which promised political and religious freedom. In Leyden, Bradford took advantage of the university library to complete his self-education. At twenty-three, already a respected member of the congregation, he married sixteen-year-old Dorothy May; two years later they had a son, John.

But the Puritans were first and foremost Englishmen, and readily left Holland when the opportunity came to establish an English colony in the New World. Sponsored by the Merchant Adventurers—a group of profit-hungry businessmen—the Puritans sailed for their "Promised Land" in September 1620 in an overcrowded ship called the Mayflower. Within sight of land, the colonists drew up an agreement to govern themselves, known as The Mayflower Compact. The seeds for democracy were thus planted before they ever set foot on dry ground.

While Bradford and the other men were exploring the shore for a place to build their colony, Dorothy Bradford apparently drowned. More than half the colonists died that first winter of "the terrible sickness." The following spring Bradford was elected governor of New Plymouth and continued to be re-elected for a span of thirty years. Three years after his wife’s death, Bradford married Alice Carpenter Southworth, taking in a bevy of homeless boys, as well as his own children.

William Bradford had a reputation for dealing fairly with both colonists and Indians and lived in peace with their closest neighbor, Chief Massasoit and the Wampanoag tribe, for fifty years. Twice while Bradford was governor, however, Plymouth attacked Indians they perceived as a threat, events that troubled the Separatists who had hopes of "Christianizing" the Indians. Unfortunately, the history of New England reveals that colonists killed many more Indians than they converted.

In 1630, Bradford began writing his important history, Of Plymouth Plantation (originally spelled, "Plimoth"). Long after his death in 1657, he represented the vision of the Puritans who came to this country seeking freedom of religion. But his hope for an ongoing community united in the worship of God was never fully realized. Still, the seeds of democracy were planted by these earnest Pilgrims, who laid the groundwork for free people making their own laws by common consent.



Literary Works

William Bradford's most well-known work by far is Of Plymouth Plantation. It was a detailed history in manuscript form about the founding of the Plymouth colony and the lives of the colonists from 1621 to 1646. It is a common misconception that the manuscript was actually Bradford's journal. Rather, it was a retrospective account of his recollections and observations, written in the form of two books. The first book was written in 1630; the second was never finished, but "between 1646 and 1650, he brought the account of the colony's struggles and achievements through the year 1646." As Walter P. Wenska states, "Bradford writes most of his history out of his nostalgia, long after the decline of Pilgrim fervor and commitment had become apparent. Both the early annals which express his confidence in the Pilgrim mission and the later annals, some of which reveal his dismay and disappointment, were written at about the same time." In Of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford drew deep parallels between everyday life and the events of the Bible. As Philip Gould writes, "Bradford hoped to demonstrate the workings of divine providence for the edification of future generations." Despite the fact that the manuscript was not published until 1656, the year before his death, it was well received by his near contemporaries.

In 1888 Charles F. Richardson referred to Bradford as a "forerunner of literature" and "a story-teller of considerable power;" Moses Coit Tyler called him "the father of American history." Many American authors have cited the manuscript in their works; for example, Cotton Mather referenced it in Magnalia Christi Americana and Thomas Prince referred to it in A Chronological History of New-England in the Form of Annals. Even today it is considered a valuable piece of American literature, included in anthologies and studied in literature and history classes. It has been called "'an American classic' and 'the pre-eminent work of art' in seventeenth-century New England." The Of Plymouth Plantation manuscript disappeared by 1780, "presumably stolen by a British soldier during the British occupation of Boston" and reappeared in Fulham, England. As Philip Gould states, "In 1855, scholars intrigued by references to Bradford in two books on the history of the Episcopal Church in America (both located in England) located the manuscript in the bishop of London's library at Lambeth Palace." A long debate ensued as to the rightful home for the manuscript. Multiple attempts by United States Senator George Frisbie Hoar and others to have it returned proved futile at first. According to Francis B. Dedmond, "after a stay of well over a century at Fulham and years of effort to [e]ffect its release, the manuscript was returned to Massachusetts" on May 26, 1897.

Bradford's journal, even though it did not become Of Plymouth Plantation, was also published. It was contributed to another work entitled Mourt's Relation which was written in part by Edward Winslow, and published in England by one of Bradford's contemporaries. Published in 1622, it was intended to inform Europeans about the conditions surrounding the American colonists at the Plymouth Colony. As governor of the Plymouth Colony, his work was considered a valuable contribution and was thus included in the book. Despite the fact that the book included a large amount of Bradford's work it is not typically referenced as one of his significant works due to the fact that it was published under someone else's name.

In addition to his more well-known work, Bradford also dabbled in poetry. According to Mark L. Sargent, "his poems are often lamentations, sharp indictments of the infidelity and self-interest of the new generation. On occasion, the poems recycle dark images from the history." Although his poetry is still available today to the interested reader it is not nearly as famous as Of Plymouth Plantation.

Bradford's Dialogues are a collection of fictional conversations between the old and new generations. In the Dialogues, conversations ensue between "younge men" and "Ancient men," the former being the young colonists of Plymouth, the latter being "the protagonists from Of Plymouth Plantation" (Sargent 413). As Mark L. Sargent states: "By bringing the young from Plymouth Plantation and the ancients from Of Plymouth Plantation into 'dialogue,'...Bradford wisely dramatizes the act of historical recovery as a negotiation between the two generations, between his young readers and his text." Today, only a small portion of the Dialogues remain; however, a modified copy made by Nathaniel Morton exists.

Web sites about William Bradford Modern History Sourcebook: William Bradford, from History of Plymouth Plantation The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School: William Bradford, Surrender of the Patent of Plymouth Colony to the Freemen