Literature between 1620-1700

Puritan Literature http://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yst_uUL0gqE&feature=related

Imagine the passage from 17th century England to the New World

• The violence and disruptions of the old country and the unknown terrors of the new one; the loss of home, of kinship, of worldly possessions (these ships were very small), of so much that matters to one’s personal and cultural identity.

Puritanism in New England • http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/purdef.htm

• Definitions:– The term "Puritan" first began as a taunt or insult applied by traditional Anglicans to

those who criticized or wished to "purify" the Church of England. Although the word is often applied loosely, "Puritan" refers to two distinct groups: "separating" Puritans, such as the Plymouth colonists, who believed that the Church of England was corrupt and that true Christians must separate themselves from it; and non-separating Puritans, such as the colonists who settled the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who believed in reform but not separation.

– Most Massachusetts colonists were nonseparating Puritans who wished to reform the established church, largely Congregationalists who believed in forming churches through voluntary compacts.

– The idea of compacts or covenants was central to the Puritans' conception of social, political, and religious organizations.

The Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock

• A year after landing at Plymouth Rock, half of the Mayflower Pilgrims were dead…

• Religious warfare raged in Europe; civil war would soon break out in the English homeland, and a succession of religious upheavals and political changes over the previous half century had claimed tens of thousands of lives.

What did morality mean to these people?

• The Massachusetts Bay Colonists were primarily, though not exclusively, Puritan in ideology, which meant that most believed in the literal authority of the Bible.

• They saw the Bible as a topological model for their own lives – the Puritan writers use biblical metaphors to explain the Puritan condition; they often refer to themselves, for example, as Israelites, and the New World becomes Canaan.

Beliefs• Several beliefs differentiated Puritans from other Christians.

• The first was their belief in predestination.

• Puritans believed that belief in Jesus and participation in the sacraments could not alone effect one's salvation; one cannot choose salvation, for that is the privilege of God alone.

• All features of salvation are determined by God's sovereignty, including choosing those who will be saved and those who will receive God's irresistible grace.

• The Puritans distinguished between "justification," or the gift of God's grace given to the elect, and "sanctification," the holy behavior that supposedly resulted when an individual had been saved; according to The English Literatures of America, "Sanctification is evidence of salvation, but does not cause it" (434).

TYPOLOGY• Puritan Typology : http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/typology.htm

• Based on an ancient hermeneutic method (Hebrews 10:1), typology is the interpretation of Old Testament events, persons, and ceremonies as signs which prefigured Christ's fulfillment and new covenant with the apostolic church.

• The concepts arose from those of the skia (shadow) and typos (type). • Typology involves identification both of a type or figura, a figure, concept, ceremony, or event as

an Old Testament precursor, and an anti-type, a New Testament historical figure or event that follows and fulfills the promise of the type.

– The belief that God’s intentions are present in human action and in natural phenomenon.

– Failure to understand these intentions are human limitation. – Puritans believe in cyclical or repetitive history; they uses “types”- Moses

prefigures Jesus, Jonah’s patience is reflective in Jesus' ordeal on the cross, and Moses’ journey out of Egypt is played out in the Pilgrim’s crossing of the Atlantic.

– God wrath and reward are also present in natural phenomena like flooding, bountiful harvest, the invasion of locusts, and the lightening striking a home

Manifest Destiny

• The concept of manifest destiny is as old as the first New England settlements. Without using the words, John Winthrop articulated the concept in his famous sermon, the Arabella Covenant (1630), when he said: “…for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us;…

• Winthrop exhorts his listeners to carry on God’s mission and to set a shining example for the rest of the world. From this beginning, the concept has had religious, social, economic, and political conquencenses.

• The words manifest destiny were first used by the editor John L. O’Sullivan in 1845

TULIP• T - Total Depravity (also known as Total

– Inability and Original Sin)• Man is naturally unable to exercise free will, since through Adam's fall he has suffered hereditary corruption.

Evil was a palpable presence in the Puritans' world, and it was often symbolized by the struggle between light and darkness. In this system, it was impossible to find disillusioned Puritans, for they believed that there was no horror that man could not commit.

• U - Unconditional Election • Election manifests itself through God's wisdom to elect those to be saved, despite their inability to perform

saving works. Only a chosen few are so elected, and simply being a church member did not necessarily signify election.

• L- Limited Atonement (also known as Particular– Atonement)

• Man's hereditary corruption is partially atoned for by Christ, and this atonement is provided to the elect through the Holy Spirit. This limited atonement gives them the power to attempt to obey God's will as revealed through the Bible

• I- Irresistible Grace• Grace was a "motion of the heart" that was God's gift to the elect-unconditional, irresistible, and inexorable.

It came to each directly and could not be taken away. It promised "ecstatic intimacy with the divine" or "soul liberty." When Winthrop talks about liberty, this is the sort that he counts on his audience recalling.

• P - Perseverance of the Saints (also known as Once– Saved Always Saved)

• Those who are predetermined as elect inevitably persevere in the path of holiness.

The Function of Puritan Writers

• 1. to transform a mysterious God- mysterious because he is separate from the world.

• 2. to make him more relevant to the universe.• 3. to glorify God

• http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/calvin.htm

• Calvinism in New England Puritan Culture

The Style of Puritan Writing

• 1. Protest – against ornateness; reverence for the Bible

• 2. Purposiveness – there was a purpose to Puritan writing : The Function as described in the previous slide

• 3. Puritan writing reflected the character and scope of the reading public, which was literate and well-grounded in religion

Reasons for Puritan Literacy Dominance over the Virginians

• 1. Puritans were basically middle class and fairly well-educated.

• 2. Virginians were tradesmen and separated from English writing.

• 3. Puritans were children of the covenant; gave them a drive and a purpose to write.

Common Themes

• 1. Idealism – both religious and political• 2. Pragmaticism – practicality and

purposiveness

Forces Undermining Puritanism• 1. A person’s natural desire to do good- this works against

predestination.• 2. Dislike of a “closed” life.• 3. Resentment of the power of the few over many.• 4. Change in economic conditions – growth of fishery, farms, etc.• 5. Presence of the leader of dissent – Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams.• 6. The presence of the frontier- concept of self-reliance, individualism,

and optimism.• 7. Change in political conditions – MA becomes a Crown colony.• 8. Theocracy suffered from a lack of flexibility.• 9. Growth of rationality – use of the mind to know God- less dependence

on the Bible.• 10. Cosmopolitanism of the new immigrants

Visible Signs of Decay

• 1. Visible decay of godliness.• 2. Manifestations of pride – especially among the new rich.• 3. Presence of “heretics” – Quakers and Anabaptists• 4. Violations of the Sabbath and swearing ands sleeping during

sermons• 5. Decay in the family government• 6. People full of contention – rise in lawsuits and lawyers• 7. Sins of sex and alcohol on the increase.• 8. Decay in business morality – lying, \laborers underpaid, etc.• 9. No disposition to reform• 10. lacking in social behavior

Some Aspects of the Puritan Legacy: each has positive and negative implications

• 1. The Need for moral justification for private, public, and governmental acts.

• 2. The Questing for Freedom – personal, political, economic, and social.

• 3. the Puritan work ethic.• 4. Elegiac verse – morbid fascination with death• 5. The city upon a hill – concept of manifest

destiny

Here are a few key matters:• * Puritans viewed the Bible as God’s covenant with them; they

saw themselves as a Chosen People and identified strongly with the tribes of Israel in the Book of Exodus. In reading both Testaments, they included that God, though sometimes arbitrary in his power, is neither malicious nor capricious.

• * Doers of evil suffer and are destroyed; true believers and doers of good may suffer as well, as worldly misfortune as both a test of faith and a signifier of God’s will.

• * Covenant theology taught that although no human being can ever know for certain whether or not he or she is among the saved, the only hope lay in rigorous study of Scripture; relentless moral self-examination, and active, whole-hearted membership in these congregations

Issues

• 1. With no central religious authority, and an expectation that each member of the community should encounter Scripture and theological prose firsthand, New England Puritanism would be strongly influenced by a drive toward solidarity and consensus and by a championing of individual thought. These conflicting values would become clear in the collision between the Colony’s elders and Anne Hutchinson, less than ten years after the founding of Boston.

Issues

• 2. An emphasis on individual responsibility, on a direct and personal relationship with God, and on the acquisition of knowledge in anticipation (or hope) of the coming of Divine Grace could be a powerful force for the education of women, and eventually for their political and social equality.

Issues

• 3. A belief that salvation required, and would be signified by, achievement of absolute integrity among faith, worldly conduct, private life, and the spoken and written word would eventually figure centrally in the rise of abolitionist sentiment: race slavery becomes not an economic expediency or a social problem to be overlooked and eventually remedied but a mortal sin, threatening the moral condition of the society and every individual within it. The ,long-term effects of this kind of thinking are enormous.

Issues

• 4. A belief in a special destiny and a conviction that what was unfolding in New England was the last and best hope of the Christian world. Cataclysmic changes in London in the middle of the 17th century and the erosion of solidarity in the colony after the Restoration (1660) and with the passage of years would bring those convictions into crisis at the century’s end.

Issues

• 5. A special emphasis on reading correctly- not only holy texts but commentaries and the events of ordinary life. The New England Puritans were an intellectual people who believed firmly in portents, symbols, and the significance of all that happened in private and public life.

Of Plymouth Plantation

• An excellent foundation for the study of colonial American Literature, as it offers a thorough portrait of hopes and expectations central to the new England Puritan mind, and it shows us how an idea of destiny, and an expectation that all worldly experience

William Bradford

• 1550-1657• Elected gov of Plymouth in the MA Bay Colony

after death of John Carver• He was deeply pious, self-educated and had

learned several languages, including Hebrew, in order to “see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of god in their native beauty.”

William Bradford• Born: March, 1590 - Yorkshire, England

Died: May 9, 1657 - Plymouth, MA s a member of the Separatist movement within Puritanism, Bradford migrated to Holland in 1609 in search of religious freedom and lived 11 years in Leiden.

• In 1620 he helped organize the Mayflower's expedition to the New World.

• To bind the group into a political body, Bradford helped draft the important Mayflower Compact en route to America.

• Once on land, he helped select the site for the new colony.

• In 1621, after the colony's first, disastrous winter, he was unanimously elected governor, and he served in that position for some 30 years between 1621 and 1656.

• His remarkable tact, honesty, and political ability proved indispensable in assuring the colony's survival, and he helped avert numerous potential disasters.

• He was instrumental in establishing and fostering the principles of self-government and religious freedom that characterized later American colonial government.

William Bradford

• His participation in the migration to Holland and the Mayflower voyage to Plymouth, and his duties as governor, made him ideally suited to be the first historian of his colony.

• His history, Of Plymouth Plantation (1651), is a clear and compelling account of the colony’s beginning.

• Though lacking in formal education, Bradford possessed native literary ability.

• His vivid account of the early settlement, History of Plimoth Plantation, 1620-1647, not published in full until 200 years after his death (1856), has been a unique source of information about the Puritans' voyage and the challenges that faced the settlers.

On Plymouth Plantation• His description of the first view of America is justly

famous:

• Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles…they had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor…savage barbarians…were readier to fill their sides with arrows than otherwise. And for the reason it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know the to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms…all stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild savage hue

The “Mayflower Compact”

• Bradford also recorded the first document of colonial self-governance in the English New World, the “Mayflower Compact,” drawn up while the Pilgrims were still on board ship.

• The compact was a harbinger of the Declaration of Independence to come a century and a half later

Mayflower Compact – What is it? •

The Mayflower Compact is a written agreement composed by a consensus of the new Settlers arriving at New Plymouth in November of 1620. They had traveled across the ocean on the ship Mayflower which was anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The Mayflower Compact was drawn up with fair and equal laws, for the general good of the settlement and with the will of the majority. The Mayflower’s passengers knew that the New World’s earlier settlers failed due to a lack of government. They hashed out the content and eventually composed the Compact for the sake of their own survival.

All 41 of the adult male members on the Mayflower signed the Compact. Being the first written laws for the new land, the Compact determined authority within the settlement and was the observed as such until 1691. This established that the colony (mostly persecuted Separatists), was to be free of English law. It was devised to set up a government from within themselves and was written by those to be governed.

Mayflower Compact – What did it say?The original document is said to have been lost, but the writings of William Bradford’s journal Of Plymouth Plantation and in Edward Winslow’s Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth are in agreement and accepted as accurate. The Mayflower Compact reads:

"In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of God, of England, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, e&. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, King James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620."

Mayflower Compact – Who signed it and why?

One of the first lists of the Mayflower Compact’s signers was provided by William Bradford’s nephew, Nathaniel Morton. The names are published in his 1669 New England’s Memorial. They are also posted by the Avalon Project of Yale University. Some of the more familiar names includes are those such as: John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, William Brewster, Isaac Allerton, Myles Standish, and John Alden.

When creating the Mayflower Compact, the signers believed that covenants were not only to be honored between God and man, but also between each other. They had always honored covenants as part of their righteous integrity and agreed to be bound by this same principle with the Compact. John Adams and many historians have referred to the Mayflower Compact as the foundation of the U.S. Constitution written more than 150 later.

The Mayflower Compact by William Bradford November 11, 1620

• The Mayflower Compact was drawn up on the Mayflower, under these circumstances as described by Gov. William Bradford:

• "This day, before we came to harbour, observing some not well affected to unity and concord, but gave some appearance of faction, it was thought good there should be an association and agreement, that we should combine together in one body, and to submit to such government and governors as we should by common consent agree to make and choose, and set our hands to this that follows, word for word. . ."

•

Signers• Mr. John Carver, Mr. William Bradford, Mr Edward Winslow, Mr. William

Brewster. Isaac Allerton, Myles Standish,John Alden, John Turner, Francis Eaton, James Chilton, John Craxton , John Billington, Joses Fletcher,John Goodman, Mr. Samuel Fuller, Mr. Christopher Martin, Mr. William Mullins, Mr. William White,Mr. Richard Warren, John Howland, Mr. Steven Hopkins, Digery Priest, Thomas Williams,Gilbert Winslow, Edmund Margesson, Peter Brown, Richard Britteridge, George Soule,Edward Tilly, John Tilly, Francis Cooke, Thomas Rogers, Thomas Tinker, John Ridgdale, Edward Fuller, Richard Clark, Richard Gardiner, Mr. John Allerton, Thomas English, Edward Doten, Edward Liester.

Puritan Search for Order

• The Puritan's religious beliefs facilitated the rapid establishment of stable communities

• Nearly ¾ of Puritan settlers migrated in family groups that included wives and daughters

• New Englanders soon began to reproduce

• They had high and rising rates of childbirth (1st generation Plymouth women bore an average of 7.8 children, the majority own whom lived to adulthood.)

• The Puritan ideology, the family stood as a lynchpin of social order, a value that was magnified in the frontier conditions of the New world as the colonists encounters physical hardships, disease and persistent conflicts with Natives

• They embraced hierarchical notions of family – each person’s role clearly delineated

• The family unit – so crucial• Shaped by religious ideas• MA colonies followed the English principle of

FEME COVERT: Widows had more opportunities to control their wealth

• Marriage was viewed as a civil contract rather than as a religious sacrament – permitted divorce and allowed remarriage

• Divorce was permitted• Women did not gain power in marriage• Women were subordinate to men• New England colonies mandated by law that

all children be taught to read, and all women did have a high literacy rate. Yet, rosters indicate that few girls attended school; those who did were not encouraged to learn to write

• Few women wrote diaries or book

• Of all the 911 books produced in the 17th century New England, only 4 were written by women

• One of these, the most famous was Anne Bradstreet’s Several Poems Complied with Great Variety of Wit and Learning (1678) and Mary Rowlandson’s: A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson (1677)

• Puritan women many have shared w ,men the right to be members of the church once they satisfactorily testified to their salvation, clergy and other male community leaders periodically punished or banished heretical women who challenged male authority: Anne Hutchinson

The MA BAY Experiment

• 1630 – the Puritans came to the New World and started the MA Bay Experiment: seventeen ships and 1,000 people. It was the largest single migration of its kind in the 17th century.

• Unlike Plymouth, The MA BAY migration quickly produced several different settlements: Boston, Charlestown, Newtown (Cambridge), Roxbury, Dorchester, Ipswich, Concord, Sudbury, …

Two Important New England Settlements

The Plymouth ColonyFlagship Mayflower arrives - 1620Leader - William BradfordSettlers known as Pilgrims and Separatists"The Mayflower Compact“ provides forsocial, religious, and economic freedom

• The Massachusetts Bay Colony

• Founded as a business ventureFlagship Arbella arrives - 1630Leader - John WinthropSettlers are mostly Puritans or Congregational Puritans"The Arbella Covenant“ clearly establishesa religious and theocratic settlement,

The Massachusetts Bay Colony exhibited all of the following characteristics:

• 1. it was more Puritan than Separatist• 2. it included family groups from the onset• 3. it quickly produced several settlements• 4. it developed a small fur trade w the local

Indians

John Winthrop

• Dominated colonial politics: 1630 Sails for New England; writes first journal entry of Bay Colony; delivers his lay-sermon, "Modell of Christian Charity," aboard the Arbella.

• 1634 Voted out of the governorship. • 1637 Reelected governor. • 1640 Voted out of governorship. • 1642 Reelected governor. • 1645 Stands trial, having been accused for overstepping

authority. • 1646 Reelected governor and serves until his death.

Relations between the settlers and the Natives

• New England Settlers believed that the Indians were:

• 1. were a threat to the existence of a godly community

• 2. hindered migration into the Connecticut valley

• 3. should be civilized and converted• 4 should serve as partners in trading ventures

• Relationships between early Plymouth settlers and local Indians were peaceful, since the local Indians were weaker than the settlers…

The Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation benefited from their relationship with the Indians in that:

• 1. They settled on land that had already been cleared by Indians

• 2. the Indians in the area were too weak to cause them much difficulty

• 3. a few Indians showed them how to gather seafood and cultivate corn

• 4. the Pilgrims were less hostile to the Indians than the Virginians

Roger Williams• Roger Williams (ca. 1603-83), religious leader and one of the founders of Rhode Island, was the son of a well-

to-do London businessman.

• Educated at Cambridge (A.B., 1627) he became a clergyman and in 1630 sailed for Massachusetts (the LYON).

• He refused a call to the church of Boston because it had not formally broken with the Church of England, but after two invitations he became the assistant pastor, later pastor, of the church at Salem.

• He questioned the right of the colonists to take the Indians' land from them merely on the legal basis of the royal charter and in other ways ran afoul of the oligarchy then ruling Massachusetts.

• In 1635 he was found guilty of spreading "new authority of magistrates" and was ordered to be banished from the colony. He lived briefly with friendly Indians and then, in 1636, founded Providence in what was to be the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. His religious views led him to become briefly a Baptist, later a Seeker.

• In 1644, while he was in England getting a charter for his colony from Parliament, he wrote the work from which this dialogue is taken. During much of his later life he was engaged in polemics on political and religious questions.

• He was an important figure in the intellectual life of his time

Anne Bradstreet

• Born in North Hampton, England 1612• Parents: Thomas Dudley and Dorothy Yorke =

Noble heritage– Dudley was the leader of the volunteer soldiers in

the English reformation and Elizabethan settlement

Anne Bradstreet

• At age 16 she married Simon Bradstreet – he was 25 and an assistant in the MA Bay Co and son of a Puritan minister

• Anne and her family emigrated to America in 1630 on the Arabella– She found this journey very very hard – expresses

this is her writing• Anne was well educated: tutored in history,

several languages and literature

Anne Bradstreet

• John Winthrop = Governor• Thomas Dudley = Deputy Governor• Simon Bradstreet = Chief Administrator• They relied on God• Anne had poor health (sm. Pox earlier in life and would

suffer throughout)• Anne and Simon had 8 children• Their home went up in flames at one point – everything

gone, homeless• But hard work and perservance – through their faith would

seem them through

Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)

• One of the most important figures in American Literature

• She is considered by many to be the first American poet

• Her book The Tenth Muse lately Sprung Up in America was the 1st book written by a women to be published in the United States

• Her work serves as a document of the struggles of a Puritan wife against the hardships of New England and Colonial life…

• A testament to plight of the women of the age…• Her life was a constant struggle…• Adapting to a new land – death – fear – illness –

Indians…• Her faith was exemplary…• She loves her husband and her children…• Her poems were written mainly during periods of

loneness…• Her husband is often away on political matters…• She was well educated…• She passed that education down to her children

Puritan ideology of Anne Bradstreet

• * found in her poetry• * deeply devoted to God and her family• *Humility• * indifference to material wealth• * her spirituality• * She was a positive role model• * her strong intuition• * constant fascination with the human mind, spirit,

and inner guidance

Characteristics of her poems• *Her style is deceptively simple, yet speaks of a woman of

high intelligence and ideals…very much in love with her husband and family and has unconditional faith…

• *Lyrical and logical• *Self-effacing “apology” (art claiming artlessness) gradually

becomes more authoritative poetic persona (bold assertion followed by retraction)

• * Didactic• *Pride in ability to instruct and experience life• * distaste for dualism and hierarchy; preference for balance• *attachment to nature and the body (even questioning God)• *Self-exploration through historic and mythic heroines• *Dwelling on the domestic as authoritative• *Language and imagery often direct, relatively simple

The Half-Way Covenant• The children of first-generation believers were admitted to limited membership in the Congregational church, on the

grounds that as children of the elect, they would undoubtedly experience conversion and become full members of the church.

• Not all underwent a conversion experience, however, thus leaving in doubt the future of their children, the grandchildren of the original church members.

• Drafted by Richard Mather and approved in 1662, the Half-way Covenant proposed that second-generation members be granted the same privilege of baptism (but not communion) as had been granted to the first generation.

• According to Norman Grabo, "This encouraged individual congregations to baptize the infant children of church members but not to admit them to full membership until they were at least 14 years old" and could profess conversion.

• "The partaking of the Lord's Supper became a lure to struggling half-way members to discover their right to full membership and a public sign of the purest in the congregation."

• Richard, and, later, Increase Mather supported it, as did Edward Taylor; but Solomon Stoddard from Northampton argued that, according to the Half-Way Covenant, no man was permitted to partake of the Lord's Supper until he had certain knowledge and assurance of salvation; without this knowledge, attendance at the sacrament was damning.

• Stoddard said that no man could know he was saved with absolute certainty; thus all well-behaved Christians should be admitted to the sacrament in hopes that they might secure saving grace or be converted by it. (Grabo 32)

Early American Captivity Narratives• http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/captive.htm• According to Richard Slotkin,

– "In [a captivity narrative] a single individual, usually a woman, stands passively under the strokes of evil, awaiting rescue by the grace of God.

– The sufferer represents the whole, chastened body of Puritan society; and the temporary bondage of the captive to the Indian is dual paradigm-- of the bondage of the soul to the flesh and the temptations arising from original sin, and of the self-exile of the English Israel from England.

– In the Indian's devilish clutches, the captive had to meet and reject the temptation of Indian marriage and/or the Indian's "cannibal" Eucharist.

– To partake of the Indian's love or of his equivalent of bread and wine was to debase, to un-English the very soul.

– The captive's ultimate redemption by the grace of Christ and the efforts of the Puritan magistrates is likened to the regeneration of the soul in conversion.

– The ordeal is at once threatful of pain and evil and promising of ultimate salvation. – Through the captive's proxy, the promise of a similar salvation could be offered to the

faithful among the reading public, while the captive's torments remained to harrow the hearts of those not yet awakened to their fallen nature" (Regeneration Through Violence)

Rhetorical Purposes

• Religious expression Justification of westward expansion Nineteenth-century: – cultural symbol of American national heritage

Popular literature Reinforcement of stereotypes

– a. Spanish: Indians as brutish beasts b. French: Indians as souls needing redemption c. English in Virginia: innocent exotics d. Puritans: Satanic threat to religious utopia

Themes and Types

• Fears of cannibalism • Fears of scalping• Hunter-predator myth: captive as cultural mediator between

savagery and civilization • Judea capta, for Puritans: Israel suffering under Babylonian

captivity.• Freudian view: captivity becomes adoption• Myths

– a. Myth of Love in the Woods (Pocahontas and John Smith) – b. Myth of Good Companions in the Wilderness (Cooper's Natty

Bumppo and Chingachgook) – c. Myth of White Woman with a Tomahawk (Hannah Dustan; inverts

Pocahontas; kills 10 Indians and scalps them when she escapes.)

Mary Rowlandson

• Was born circa 1637-1638 in England.

• With her parents John and Joan White, she sailed for Salem in 1639.

• Joseph Rowlandson became a minister in 1654 and two years later he and Mary were married.

• They had a child, Mary, who lived for three years; their other children were Joseph, b. 1661; Mary, b. 1665; Sarah, b. 1669. At the time of their capture, the children were 14, 10, and 6.

• In 1675 Joseph Rowlandson went to Boston to beg for help from the Massachusetts General Assembly, during which period Mary Rowlandson was captured.

• After her redemption, the couple lived in Boston and then moved 1677 to Wethersfield, Connecticut.

• Joseph Rowlandson died 24 November 1678 after preaching a powerful fast-day jeremiad.

• Mary Rowlandson remarried 6 Aug 1679 to Captain Samuel Talcott.

• He died in 1691; she lived until 1710.

• Disgrace later came to the family: her son Joseph got his brother-in-law drunk and sold him into servitude in Virginia.

• While a prisoner, Mary Rowlandson travelled some 150 miles, from Lancaster to Menamaset then north to Northfield and across the Connecticut river to meet with King Philip/Metacomet himself, sachem of the Wampanoags.

• Next she traveled up into southwestern New Hampshire, south to Menamaset, and north to Mount Wachusett.

• According to Kathryn Derounian-Stodola, "Introducing her work in all four 1682 editions was an anonymous preface to the reader, signed only 'per Amicum' (By a Friend), but almost certainly written by Increase Mather.

• In 1681, Mather had proposed to a group of Puritan ministers that they collect stories of 'special providences' concerning New England to be evaluated, sorted, and eventually anthologized.

• Quite probably Rowlandson's narrative was among the providential accounts he received, but owing to its length, local currency, and intrinsic worth, he may have suggested separate publication and agreed to help. . ."

Forms of Puritan Rhetoric: The Jeremiad and the Conversion Narrative

• http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/jeremiad.htm• According to Emory Elliott, Thomas Hooker (1586-1647) "favored a more liberal

membership policy [than his rival John Cotton], and he devised an elaborate preparation process that involved precise psychological stages on the way to conversion. The six essential stages of this morphology of conversion were contrition, humiliation, vocation, implantation, exaltation, and possession; and these he subdivided further. He required that a prospective member demonstrate to him and then to the congregation a successful passage through these stages" (Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. 1, 201).

• Contrition. Man should look into the Law of God and make an examination of his life and state according to the Law.

• Humiliation. Conviction of conscience by which seeker realizes that he is under sin. • Vocation. Despair of salvation, in respect to strength of self and other creatures. • Implantation. True humiliation of heart, grief and fear because of sin. Confession. • Exaltation. First entrance into the state of saving grace. • Possession. Awareness of presence of faith.