Representative American Writers of the Colonial Period (1607-1750s)

Bradford, William (1590-1657), historian – 'History of Plimoth Plantation'.

Bradstreet, Anne (1612?-72), poet – 'The Tenth Muse…'; 'Contemplations'.

Byrd, William (1674-1744), historian and diarist – 'History of the Dividing Line'; 'Secret Diary'.

Edwards, Jonathan (1703-58), theologian – 'Personal Narrative'; 'The Freedom of the Will'.

Knight, Sarah Kemble (1666-1727), diarist – 'The Journal of Mme. Knight'.

Mather, Cotton (1663-1728), theologian – 'Wonders of the Invisible World'; 'Magnalia Christi Americana'.

Rowlandson, Mary (1635?-78?), essayist – 'A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration'.

Sewall, Samuel (1652-1730), diarist – 'Diary of Samuel Sewall 1674-1729'; 'The Selling of Joseph'.

Smith, John (1580-1631), historian – 'A Description of New England'; 'The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles'.

Taylor, Edward (1642-1729), poet – 'God's Determinations'; 'Sacramental Meditations'.

Ward, Nathaniel (1578?-1652), essayist – 'The Simple Cobler of Aggawam'.

Wigglesworth, Michael (1631-1705), poet – 'The Day of Doom'.

Williams, Roger (1603?-83), historian – 'A Key into the Language of America'; 'The Bloody Tenent of Persecution'.

[1] Contrary to what many people believe, the colonization of North America by Europeans did not mark the beginning of cultural development on the continent: Native American cultures were already flourishing there for thousands years. The explorers who came to the New World thought themselves much superior to the Native Americans, because of their white race, navigation skills, instruments, and Christianity. Native Americans in their turn must have been equally ethnocentric, proud of their empires and sure of their own superiority. European colonization stopped the development of this civilization, and what is known today of Native American history was learnt from artifacts and oral lore.

The cultures of 350 to 700 North American tribes of the 17^th century differed greatly. There were quasi-nomadic hunting cultures, like Navajo, agricultural pueblo-dwelling Acoma, lakeside dwellers, like Ojibwa, and desert tribes, like Hopi. Most tribes were polytheistic and their deities often took the form of their means of living, agricultural plants and hunted animals, that were celebrated by agricultural and hunting rituals. Systems of government ranged from democracies to councils of elders and theocracies.

Despite the variety of beliefs, one common concept was shared by all the tribes: intimate relationship between human and nature. Native Americans did not generally believe in one supreme eternal being who established the conditions under which all beings must exist, nor did they believe that humans were radically different from the rest of the earth's inhabitants. They respected nature because they viewed it as an ancestor and a relative.

[2] The first printing press in America that initiated national publishing business was started in Massachusetts in 1638, less than two decades after the foundation the first New England colony.

[3] The books by Smith were also his argument in the struggle for dominance with other candidates for the post of governor: John Newport and Edward Maria Wingfiled. So Smith's, Newport's and Wingfield's reports stressed their own abilities and placed the blame for failures upon others, thus providing different points of view on some events.

[4] The early settlers in New England were Protestants. England had become a Protestant country when King Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation.

Some Englishmen, however, felt that the break was not complete. They wanted to "purify" the church of Catholic features; they were therefore known as Puritans, followers of the religious reformer John Calvin. Another group wanted to separate, or break away entirely, from the Church of England. These became known as the Separatists, later the Pilgrims.

In the Puritan view, God was supreme and their faith can be summed up in three basic concepts: the concept of the Bible as the sole source of God's law, the concept of the original sin and the concept of predestination.

The Puritans held that God revealed His will through the Bible, which they believed literally. Clergymen interpreted the Bible in sermons, but each man and woman was obliged to study it for himself, too. To read the Bible present in every home, to discuss it, and to write about it people had to be educated. So no wonder that the Puritans were an intensely intellectual people, perhaps the most educated colonists in the World history: in 1630-1690 there were as many university graduates in the northeastern section of the US as in Britain. Soon after arriving, they began founding schools and colleges and writing and printing books. In 1636, only 16 years after the landing, Harvard College was founded partly to meet this demand for an educated populace. In 1647 free schools were opened in Massachusetts and in 1650 they appeared in Connecticut. Indeed, the intellectual quality of New England life, which later influenced other parts of the country, is traceable to the Puritans' need for a trained and literate population, who should understand the will of God.

The life of Puritans was guided by their religious feeling, primarily Calvinistic. The main doctrines of Calvinism were the doctrines of the original sin and predestination: every man was sinful since birth because of the sin of Adam, and since birth he is predestined to hell or paradise by God, and that fate could not be changed by human efforts. Later this doctrine was softened according to the developing bourgeois spirit: every man made a private covenant with God, promising to avoid sin to earn a place in heaven. Such religious faith demanded permanent self-assessment and self-discipline, looking for everyday signs of God's favor, which meant the opportunity to enter the church membership, which then guaranteed social position, or God's punishment.

The Puritan faith contradicted the doctrines of the official Church of England and so, both Puritans and Separatists came to the New World in order to worship God in their own way and to escape persecution by the English authorities. They felt they had a divine mission to fulfill: to establish a religious society in the wilderness, based upon mutual agreement, under one patriarch, who would ensure mutual support at times of hardship. This belief must have helped them endure the hard life they faced as colonists.

[5] Like a famous literary critic J. Long puts it, everything written by Bradford is austere and uncouth like the rocks of the New England shore where the Mayflower landed. While Smith landed in Virginia in blooming spring, Bradford saw the somber midwinter shore of New England.

[6] A hymnal is a collection of poems intended for group singing in church.

[7] There is one feature of American colonial poetry that modern readers should take into account. Education in the 17^th century was intended to produce men and women of wit (understood as intellectual ingenuity) as well as learning. Such wit was best revealed in the occasional verse, written by most of the educated British, including John Smith, William Bradford, Thomas Morton, Cotton Mather, William Byrd, Sarah Kemble Knight, and many minor authors. These verses were not designed to be profound, not necessarily sincere, but to dazzle, to display the author's ability to play inventively with what he or she had learnt. Even in Puritan poetry such wit was seen as an enhancement of piety, not a contradiction. Among such 17^th century wits were Nathaniel Ward, who published his verses in his more famous prose work The Simple Cobbler from Aggawam in America, Philip Pain, John Fiske, John Josselyn, John Saffin, Roger Wolcott, and many others.

The wit of the poetry was expressed in a wide variety of ways: acrostics, anagrams, puns, emblems (symbolic pictures), natural objects, rendering emblematic, biblical or mythical allusions, and conceits (unique analogies between high or abstract notions and lowly or concrete things). All these figures were authorized by the leading British poets of the century: John Donne, Ben Jonson, and George Herbert. Most such forms are found in the works of the leading American poets: Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor. The most common poetic form of the period was an epigram – a short poem in rhymed iambic pentameter chiefly arranged in couplets, which in the 17^th century was not only a vehicle of satire, but also commended friends, illustrated prose works and commented on theology.

[8] For instance, the nightingale, mentioned in Anne Bradstreet's Contemplations is just a European figure of speech, nightingales were not indigenous to New England.

[9] Language

American literature cannot be really understood if it is viewed only in the light of European influence. Despite its colonial beginnings, it became an independent literature intimately connected with the history of the country and it should not be considered as a branch of English literature just because it is written in the English language.

In the 17^th century both New England and Virginia spoke the language of Milton and Shakespeare – the London dialect that was accepted in the 16^th century as Standard English. But the distinction between economy and population the northern and the southern British colonies and lack of contacts between them produced 16 American dialects by the end of the 18^th century. These dialects formed the basis of American English.

The most distinctive feature of American English is, clearly, Americanisms, which include three groups:

1) names of unfamiliar flora and fauna and objects borrowed from Indian languages (moose, raccoon, possum, persimmon pone = maize cake, canoe, moccasins, squaw, tomahawk, totem, tobacco, potato) or invented (bull-frog, live-oak, frontiersman, backcountry = province);

2) archaisms (I guess = I suppose, clever = good, fall = autumn, gotten = got, stricken = struck);

3) words derived from Afro Americans or borrowed from European languages other than English (the Dutch 'Yankee', the French 'prairie', etc.)

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