Lesson 2 Chapter One
The first settlers:
American history is generally agreed to have begun in 1607 when the first group of the British colonist went to America and started to build their settlement there.
Pilgrim Fathers:
In the autumn of 1620, 73 men and 29 women, mostly Puritans, started for America in a ship named the “Mayflower”. In a broad sense, they represented the ancestors of the American people.
Puritanism(清教主義): it is the religious beliefs of the Puritans, who had intended to “purify” or “simplify” the religious ritual of the Church of England. They believed in the original sin and the harsh Day of Doom, although some good people-the chosen people or the Select-may be saved.
Original sin: it is the central religious belief of the Puritans that people are sinful ever since their birth. “Adam’s fall sins us all.”
Pilgrim father: they came to American nation, were quite a few of the Puritans.
Puritans: they carried with them to America a philosophy of life
Puritanism:
American Puritanism is a dominant factor in American life, it was one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American literature.
Literary scene in colonial America
General comment:
? They grew out of humble origins. Diaries, histories, journals, letters, commonplace books, travel books, sermons, in short, personal literature in its various forms, occupy a major position in the literature of the early colonial periods.
? In content these early writings served either God or colonial expansion or both.
? In form, if any, English literary traditions were faithfully imitated.
John Smith: the first American writer.
? A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Note as Hath Happened in Virginia Since the First Planting of That Colony, A Map of Virginia: with a Description of the Country, General History of Virginia
? His writings were filled with themes, myths, images, scenes, characters and events that were a foundation of American literature and helped lure the Pilgrims and Puritans to flee from the Old Worlds (Europe) to a Israel, a New Promised Land(the American Continent).
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672): the 1st American Poetess, the “Tenth Muse”
? Collections of poems: The Tenth Muse Recently Sprung Up in America
Edward Taylor(1642-1729)
? A meditative poet; nearest to the English baroque poets; first and last, a Puritan poet, concerned
Thomas Paine (1737-1809): the most important writer during the colonial period.
? Thomas Paine was a “Great Commoner of Mankind”. He fought for the rights of man, and was a most important revolutionary activist and political writer during the War of Independence (1775-1783) and the French Revolution.
? Important works:
Common Sense《常識》: a pamphlet in 1776, attacking British monarchy in N. America Colony and advocated a “Declaration for Independence”
The America Crisis: a serial of 16 pamphlets during the War of The Independence that greatly restored the fighting spirit of the soldiers and people of the North America in times of difficulties and contained many unforgettable sentences.
The Rights of Man: Thomas Paine participated in the French Revolution, and spread the ideals of French Revolution among the American colonial people.
The Age of Reason:
His writing style: his pamphlets are succinct, powerful, persuasive, and aphoristic.
Thomas Jefferson:
? An important revolutionary statesman during the War of Independence, the main drafter of The Declaration of Independence, and the 3rd president of US. His democratic ideas have run into the veins of the American people generation after generation.
Philip Freneau: father of American Poetry, Poet of the American Revolution.
? Life achievement: he was the most significant poet of C18th America, the 1st important American poet, a poet of reason; he was a transitional literary figure from the Enlightenment to the Romantic period.
? The Enlightenment 啟蒙運動: It is a literary movement in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In America, the humanistic ideas of the movement dealt a heavy blow to Puritanism in advocating science, knowledge and the power and ability of man. Franklin is a representative writer of this movement.
? Writing style: Philip Freneau was neoclassical by training and taste and yet romantic in essential spirit; he was also at once a satirist and sentimentalist, a humanitarian but also a bitter polemicist; he developed a natural, simple style with concrete diction.
? Important works:
“The Wild Honey Suckle”(野忍冬花)： it is Philip Freneau’s most widely read natural lyric with the theme of transience. The central image is a native wild flower, which makes a drastic difference from elite flower images typical of traditional English poems.
The British Prison Ship英國囚船: it is a poetic narrative of his bitter experience of captivity during the War of Independence and the best example of his political poems.
The Indian Burial Ground：it is another poetic description of native subjects-the Indians. In this poem, beauty, fancy, awe, death and eternity are harmoniously interwoven.
