Who are the Puritans?

Where do they come from and why did they come to America?

What impact do their teachings/beliefs have on their literature?

Puritanism began in sixteenth-century England as a religious and political movement.

Puritans were Protestants who sought to “purify” English Protestantism. They felt the Protestant Reformation had not gone far enough in breaking away from Catholicism.

We apply the name Pilgrim (with a capital "P") to the small band of English people who came here in 1620 on a vessel called the Mayflower and settled in Plymouth. (Of Plymouth Plantation)

We use the name Puritan to refer to a much larger group of English immigrants, led by John Winthrop (A Model of Christian Charity), who came here ten years later and started Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Both groups were motivated by their religious convictions. Both groups wished to purify their church by applying the principles of the Protestant Reformation.

Protestantism itself = branch of Christianity that had broken off from Roman Catholicism due to different interpretations of the Bible.

Puritans were more conservative than most Protestants in England at the time……which is why they chose to relocate. :)

1. Predestination God decides life in advance for each

person

2. Providence God intervenes in every day life

3. God’s Sovereignty

God is the absolute ruler

4. Natural Depravity of Mankind

Mankind is inherently evil Not caused by institutions, environment or associates

American Puritan writers helped to transform and glorify religion and God in their writings. (ex: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Edwards).

They also wrote for practical purposes. They created newspapers/newsletters to share important events and wrote many instructional manuals.

However, they also reflected the needs and desires of the reading public (i.e. they needed to entertain). Some Puritan writers reflected the loosening of Puritan rules as their years in America went on. (ex: Bradstreet’s poetry).

John Smith: A Description of New England/General Historie of Virginia (POV, rhetorical Questions, logos, pathos, persuasion)

William Bradford: Of Plymouth Plantation (POV, tone, logos, ethos)

John Winthrop: from A Model of Christian Charity Anne Bradstreet: First published poet: Upon the Burning of

our House, The Author to her Book (Extended metaphor, conceit), To My Dear and Loving Husband (paradox, repetition)

Edward Taylor: Huswifery (tone, fig. language, apostrophe, conceit)

Jonathan Edwards: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (fig. language, tone, hyperbole, allusions, parallel structure, etc.)

A Model of Christian Charity, a sermon delivered aboard the Arabella in route to the New World

Winthrop envisioned a “City of God” as the Utopian foundation for the new society he and his fellow Puritans would be building

The sermon was, in part, a plea for a real community in which “the care of the public must oversway all private respects” and in which the inhabitants must “bear one another’s burthens.”

In a more immediate sense, however, it also served to assuage tensions among the tired, water-bound passengers of the Arabella

On January 9, 1961, President-elect John F. Kennedy returned to his native Massachusetts to appear before the state legislature to make his final formal public address before assuming the office of President of the United States. Quoting John Winthrop, one of the early Pilgrims, Kennedy said, “We must always consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill – the eyes of all people are upon us.” In the speech, which would later become known as “The City Upon a Hill” speech, Kennedy paid tribute to the early role Massachusetts played in creating a republic – he thanked the citizens of Massachusetts for a lifetime of friendship and trust -- and he laid out the four essential qualities that he hoped would characterize his government: courage, judgment, integrity and dedication.

...I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arabella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. "We must always consider", he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us". Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill — constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities. For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arabella in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less fantastic than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within. History will not judge our endeavors—and a government cannot be selected—merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these. For of those to whom much is given, much is required…

President Ronald Reagan used the image as well, in his 1984 acceptance of the Republican Party nomination and in his January 11, 1989, farewell speech to the nation:

...I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still...

“In Virginia, a plaine Souldier that can use a Pick-axeAnd spade, is better than five knights…”

Smith and a group of Explorers landed in Virginia in 1607 and founded Jamestown

Smith was president of the colony from 1608-1609 and helped to obtain food, enforcediscipline and work with local Native Americans (General History of Virginia)

Mapped the coast of New England in 1614 and promoted its colonization with A Description of New England

Stories of Smith’s adventures, often embellished by his own pen (hyperbole), fascinated readers of his day and help to providedetails about the early exploration of the Americas.

Helped lead the pilgrims to what is now Massachusetts Joined the Puritans who believed that the Church of England was corrupt His austere prose style is more of an ongoing chronicle of historical events although look for slightbias as he tries to find a place for Plymouth in a divine historical plan. Of Plymouth Plantation exemplifies the aesthetic virtue of the “plain style” The simplicity of its syntactic rhythms and the concreteness of its imagery demonstrate the rhetorical power of the understatement. The plain style theoretically reflected the need to erase the self by having one’s words stylistically approach the biblical Word of God.

Among the best known of early North American Poets, the first in the British colonies to have a book published Her family was part of the nonconformist group of Puritans actively planning for the settlement of Mass. Bay She raised 8 children and wrote poetry Her poems were published into a book based on theInsistence of her brother-in-law, John Woodbridge, and despiteopposition from “carping tongues” who said her “hand a needle better fits” than a pen. Bradstreet’s verses express themes of family, love, naturesorrow, faith and resignation. However varied the subject matter, it consistently reflects the Puritan spiritual and communal vision thatInformed her life. In her poetry she reveals tensions between conventional literary subjectmatter and her own experience and her love of this world and her concernfor the afterlife of Puritan doctrine. Bradstreet’s style: plain style: works tend to be didactic in their

purposes; language is simple and straightforward, language accessible to broad audience.

Apostrophe: A figure of speech that directly addresses an absent or imaginary person or a

personified abstraction, such as liberty or love. It is an address to someone or something that

cannot answer. The effect may add familiarity or emotional intensity. Before his emigration to America, Edward Taylor worked as a teacher in England. Taylor entered Harvard College after arriving in Boston in 1668 and accepted a position as minister in Massachusetts He is now generally regarded as the best of the colonial poets, but because he thought his poetry a form of personal worship whose joyous delight in sensory experience ran counter to Puritan attitudes, He never saw them published. The discovery in the 1930’s of a stash of Taylor’s poems including Huswifery is considered one of the major literary finds of the twentieth century.

Edwards was a powerful Puritan preacher who went to Yale University and earned his Master’s in Theology.Edwards began his preaching career in one of the largestand wealthiest Puritan congregations in Massachusetts. Edwards became one of the leaders of The Great Awakening, a religious revival that swept the colonies in the 1730’s and 1740’s, His sermons stimulated religious zeal and sparked conversions often in a frenzied manner. Although in most of his sermons, books and essays, Edwards appeals to reason and logic (logos), his highly emotional sermon “Sinners” is by far his most famous work. The sermon is said to have caused listeners to rise from their seats in a state of hysteria, demonstrating Edwards’ tremendous powers of persuasion and capturing the religious fervor of The Great Awakening.

Be a part of a theocracy. Almost every person in my town would attend church.

Be the highest paid person in town Be arguably better-educated than most college

professors today. I would be well-versed in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, theology, philosophy, and in Edwards’ case, contemporary science

Have ultimate authority in matters of town governance

Believe that the purpose of my life was to do God’s will and that God was omnipotent and omniscient.