Unit 3 UTOPIAN PROMISE Puritan and Quaker Utopian Visions 1620–1750 Authors and Works spiritual decline while at the same time reaffirming the community’s identity and promise? Featured in the Video: I How did the Puritans use typology to under- John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (ser- stand and justify their experiences in the world? mon) and The Journal of John Winthrop (journal) I How did the image of America as a “vast and Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and unpeopled country” shape European immigrants’ Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (captivity attitudes and ideals? How did they deal with the fact narrative) that millions of Native Americans already inhabited William Penn, “Letter to the Lenni Lenapi Chiefs” the land that they had come over to claim? (letter) I How did the Puritans’ sense that they were liv- ing in the “end time” impact their culture? Why is Discussed in This Unit: apocalyptic imagery so prevalent in Puritan iconog- William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (history) raphy and literature? Thomas Morton, New English Canaan (satire) I What is plain style? What values and beliefs Anne Bradstreet, poems influenced the development of this mode of expres- Edward Taylor, poems sion? Sarah Kemble Knight, The Private Journal of a I Why has the jeremiad remained a central com- Journey from Boston to New York (travel narra- ponent of the rhetoric of American public life? tive) I How do Puritan and Quaker texts work to form John Woolman, The Journal of John Woolman (jour- enduring myths about America’s status as a chosen nal) and “Some Considerations on the Keeping nation? About its inclusiveness and tolerance? of Negroes” (essay) About its role as a “City on a Hill” that should serve Samson Occom, A Short Narrative of My Life (auto- as an example to the rest of the world? biography) and “Sermon Preached at the I Are there texts, or passages in texts, in this unit Execution of Moses Paul, a Mohegan” (sermon) that challenge the myths created by the dominant society? I Why are the Puritans, more than any other early immigrant group, considered such an impor- Overview Questions tant starting point for American national culture? I What different European and Native American groups inhabited the eastern shores of North Learning Objectives America in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies? What kinds of strategies did they adopt in After students have viewed the video, read the head- order to forge community identities? What and notes and literary selections in The Norton Anthol- whom did they exclude? What and whom did they ogy of American Literature, and explored related embrace? How did their respective visions and archival materials on the American Passages Web ideals undermine, overlap, and compete with one site, they should be able to another? I What qualities characterize the jeremiad form? 1. discuss the variety of ways in which European How do jeremiads work to condemn a community’s settlers imagined Native Americans; 2 UNIT 3, UTOPIAN PROMISE 2. understand how myths about America’s founda- The video for Unit 3 focuses on three texts that tion were formulated, debated, and challenged by together represent the diverse early American these seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writ- visions of “the promised land.” John Winthrop’s ers; sermon “A Model of Christian Charity,” Mary 3. explain the basic theological principles of the Rowlandson’s narrative of her captivity among the Quaker and Puritan faiths; Narragansett and Wampanoag Indians, and William 4. understand how the physical hardships of immi- Penn’s “Letter to the Lenni Lenape Indians” all par- gration and the challenges of living and traveling ticipate in a tradition of understanding personal and in unfamiliar landscapes shaped the culture of communal experience as the working of God’s will. European immigrants in the New World. Thematically, stylistically, and generically, however, the texts are very distinct from one another, reveal- ing important differences in the authors’ religious convictions and positions within their communities. Instructor Overview Winthrop, a wealthy man and a leader within his Borrowing a phrase from the New England Calvinist Puritan congregation, delivered his lay sermon on minister Samuel Danforth, the historian Perry board the ship Arbella before disembarking in Miller described the Puritans who came to America Massachusetts. The sermon serves as an optimistic to form the Massachusetts Bay Colony as having blueprint for the ideal Christian community, or “City embarked upon an “errand into the wilderness.” upon a Hill,” extolling the virtues of a clear social Here, the metaphor of the “errand” captures the and spiritual hierarchy, interpreting the Puritan immigrants’ belief that they were on a sacred mission as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, and mission, ordained by God, to create a model com- exhorting fellow congregants to maintain their pu- munity and thereby fulfill a divine covenant. While rity. A generation later, Rowlandson wrote from a Miller was interested in the specific errand the different Puritan perspective, as a woman held cap- Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans envisioned for tive by Native Americans whom she viewed as themselves, we might use his notion of the “errand” agents of the devil. Her narrative of her wanderings to consider the motivations behind the journeys of and sufferings is an example of a Jeremiad, recount- other groups who came to North America in the sev- ing the “trials and afflictions” that destroyed her ear- enteenth and eighteenth centuries. What kind of lier spiritual complacency and testifying to the errand did the Quakers in Pennsylvania believe they sweetness of her repentance and eventual salvation. had embarked upon? The Pilgrims at Plymouth? Penn, a Quaker and the wealthy proprietor of the The Anglicans, Catholics, and Sephardic Jews who Pennsylvania land charter, took an entirely different also settled on the East Coast in the seventeenth view of Native Americans in his letter to the century? Whatever they believed their errands to be, Delaware Indians, written before he left England for New World settlers were confronted with a variety the New World. His text is imbued with the toler- of challenges—the physical difficulty of living in an ance and pacifism of Quaker belief, envisioning a unfamiliar land, friction with other immigrant utopian community in which Europeans and Native groups, dissent within their own communities, con- Americans would “live soberly & kindly together.” flicts with Native Americans—that complicated The video’s coverage of Winthrop, Rowlandson, their attempts to create ideal communities. Unit 3, and Penn introduces students to these writers’ influ- “The Promised Land,” examines the Utopian visions ential utopian and dystopian visions of the promise and dystopic fears represented in the works of of America. How do these texts serve to form endur- William Bradford, Thomas Morton, John Winthrop, ing myths about America’s status as a chosen Anne Bradstreet, Mary Rowlandson, Edward Tay- nation? About its role as an example to the rest of lor, William Penn, Sarah Kemble Knight, John the world? About its inclusiveness? How do these Woolman, and Samson Occom. This unit provides early visions of America’s status overlap, undermine, contextual background and classroom materials or compete with one another? Unit 3 helps answer that explore how these early texts contributed to these questions by offering suggestions on how to American literary traditions and helped create connect these writers to their cultural contexts, to enduring myths about America. other units in the series, and to other key writers of UNIT 3,INSTRUCTOR THE PROMISED OVERVIEW LAND 3 the era. The curriculum materials help fill in the Student Overview video’s introduction to early articulations of “the promised land” by exploring writers who represent Unit 3, “The Promised Land,” explores the litera- other, diverse traditions, such as Samson Occom (a tures and cultures produced by the different Native American Calvinist minister), William European and Native American groups who in- Bradford (a Separatist Puritan), Thomas Morton habited the eastern shores of North America in the (an Anglican protestor of Puritan doctrine), and seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many of the many others. immigrant groups discussed in this unit—Puritans, The video, the archive, and the curriculum mate- Quakers, Anglicans, and others— arrived in the rials contextualize the writers of this era by examin- “New World” with optimistic plans for creating ing several key stylistic characteristics and religious model societies that would fulfill God’s will on earth. doctrines that shape their texts: (1) the role of typol- Most groups almost immediately encountered chal- ogy—the Puritans’ understanding of their lives as lenges that threatened those plans. The physical dif- the fulfillment of biblical prophecy on both a com- ficulties of living in an unfamiliar land, friction with munal and an individual level; (2) the importance of other immigrant groups, dissent within their plain style—a mode of expression characterized by own communities, and conflicts with Native Amer- simplicity, accessibility, and the absence of orna- icans complicated and undermined their attempts ment—in Puritan and Quaker speech, writing, to build ideal communities. While groups such as clothing, architecture, furniture, and visual arts; the Puritans and the Quakers failed to turn their (3) the diversity of