American Literature I, Lecture Five

American Literature I Professor Cyrus R. K. Patell Lecture Six: Puritan Poetry New York University Dates 1630 Bradstreet and Dudley families arrive with John Winthrop. 1634 Anne Hutchinson and her family emigrate to New England. 1637 Hutchinson tried by the General Court. 1638 Hutchinson tried by the church; banished to Rhode Island. John White (father of Mary Rowlandson) emigrates to New England; sends for his family the following year. 1640 The Bay Psalm Book. 1648 “Cambridge Platform” -- a statement of Puritan principles: conversions must be “personal” and “public.” 1650 Anne Bradstreet’s The Tenth Muse published in England. 1662 The “Half-Way Covenant” 1667 John Milton, Paradise Lost. Samuel Danforth, “A Brief Recognition of New England’s Errand into the 1670 Wilderness” 1674 King Philip's War begins. Mary Rowlandson captured by Wampanoag raiding party on Feb. 10; ransomed 1676 May 2. 1682 Rowlandson's narrative The Sovereignty and Goodness of God published. 1684 Massachusetts Bay Charter revoked. 1686 Anglican governor, Edmund Andros, installed. Names and Terms The Bay Psalm Book: new translation of the Psalms (1640); preface by John Cotton Revised translation of the Bay Psalm Book (1851) by Henry Dunster and Richard Lyon: special eye for David’s poetry English metaphysical poetry: John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw Samuel Johnson on metaphysical “wit”: “Life of Cowley” from the Lives of the Poets (1779–81) intertextuality paratext Patell / American Literature I / Lecture 5 2 Quotes John Cotton, The Bay Psalm Book (1640; full title: The Whole Book of Psalms Faithfully Translated into English Metre ). The preface to the translation was written by the conservative minister John Cotton, and it is often cited as evidence of the Puritans’ firm rejection of verbal artifice: “Never let any think, that for the metre sake we have taken liberty or poetical license to depart from the true and proper sense of David’s words in the Hebrew verses, no; but it hath been one part of our religious care and faithful endeavour to keep close to the original text.” “If therefore the verses are not always so smoothe and elegant as some may desire or expect, let them consider that God’s Altar needs not our polishings: Ex. 20. For we have respected rather a plain translation, than to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any paraphrase, and so have attended Conscience rather than Elegance, fidelity rather than poetry, in translating the Hebrew words into English language, and David’s poetry into English metre; that so we may sing in Sion the Lord’s songs of praise according to his own will; until he take us from hence, and wipe away all our tears, and bid us enter into our master’s joy to sing eternal Hallelujahs.” In Exodus 20: 24-25, the Lord says, “An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me. And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.” The Book was revised again in 1651 by President Henry Dunster of Harvard and Richard Lyon, who claim to have “a special eye” for the “sweetness of the verse.” According to Cotton Mather, this edition was created because “it was thought that a little more of Art was to be employed upon the verses.” Points to Remember Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705) • What is the function of the simple meter and rhyme scheme in The Day of Doom (1662)? • What is the relation between the verses and the paratextual citations of the Bible in the margin? • In what ways does the poem embody TULIP? Patell / American Literature I / Lecture 5 3 • How does the poem's rhetorical structure resemble the structure of a jeremiad sermon? What does it mean that so much of the poem (approximately the first 216 verses) are taken up with images of hellfire and damnation, and only the final few are about grace? • Relate this poem to what Stephen Greenblatt writes in “Culture” about poems of praise and blame. • The primary audience for Wigglesworth's poem is thought to have been children. • John Milton's Paradise Lost is published five years after Wigglesworth's The Day of Doom. Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612-1672) • Importance of Bradstreet’s personal history to her poetry: literary background, opportunity to write, subject matter for poetry. • The place of women in Puritan culture. In what ways does Bradstreet’s poetry depart from authorized Puritan rhetoric? How might these departures be compared to those found in Mary Rowlandson’s Sovereignty and Goodness of God? • Pay close attention to the two prefatory poems, “The Prologue” and “The Author to Her Book”: What are their dominant tropes? How do they employ irony? What rhetorical strategies do they use to justify the writing of poetry by women? • Look for moments in Bradstreet’s poetry when she seems to resist Puritan teaching about the corruption of the earthly world. • In what ways does the poem written about the burning of Bradstreet’s house reveal ambivalence about Puritan doctrine, particularly as it relates to everyday experience? • Does the listing of the items that she has lost suggest resistance to Puritan doctrine, or is it an example of the Puritan logic of affliction? • Compare the two poems written to her husband (“A Letter to Her Husband” and “To My Dear and Loving Husband”) with Bradstreet’s final poem, “As Weary Pilgrim”? What are the views of marriage set forth in each poem? Which are orthodox, which revisionist in relation to Puritan ideas about marriage and love? Edward Taylor (1642-1729) • Compare Taylor’s poetry to that of English metaphysical poets like John Donne, George Herbert, or Richard Crashaw. For further thought: Recall Samuel Johnson’s critique from “The Life of Cowley”: “the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked together by violence.” • In what ways are Taylor’s poems addressed to the unregenerate? How do they attempt to bridge the gap between the divine and the human? Patell / American Literature I / Lecture 5 4 • How does Taylor’s poetry reflect the extension of typological logic seen, for example, in the July 5, 1632 entry of John Winthrop’s Journal? • Preparatory Meditations: 217 numbered poems written over 43 years, divided into two series. The full title describes them as a collection of verbal exercises, each composed “before my Approach to the Lords Supper, Chiefly upon the Doctrine reached upon the Day of administration.” These poems vary greatly in language, tone, and subject matter, but they all appear to have the same basic purpose: to allow Taylor an opportunity to focus upon his unworthiness so that he would approach the communion table humbly. • Taylor seems to have used the meditation ritual to imagine new situations for himself and to generate new metaphors that could enable him to remind himself that without God he is insignificant. See for example, the ‘Prologue’: “I am this Crumb of Dust which is designed / To make my Pen unto Thy Praise alone ...” For Further Thought Edward Taylor: Read “Meditation 8” carefully and note the inventiveness of its metaphors. How is the soul described? The body? How do these descriptions reflect TULIP? Note in particular the ways in which Taylor brings new life to the Puritan cliché of Christ as ‘the bread of life’ and to the depiction of communion by simultaneously metaphorizing and literalizing them. Literary terms: Remember that it is not enough simply to notice and identify different metrical feet, tropes, and figures of rhetoric. It is the critic’s job to understand what effects are created through the use of these different devices. What does a writer achieve by using a particular device at a particular moment in his or her writing? Today’s Songs Joan Osborne, “One of Us,” Relish (1995) Jewel, “Who Will Save Your Soul?” Pieces of You (1995) Loretta Lynn, “God Makes No Mistakes," Van Lear Rose (2004) R.E.M., “The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” Document (1998) .

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