Module 2: Colonial Literature
Reported by: Sanilyn Grace T. Zamora
Sources: Encyclopedia
World Literature
www.shmoop.com
At the end of this module the student are expected to:
1. Describe the Colonial literature;
2. Write a summary of American literature and Colonial literature.
Introduction
Wherever there are people there will be a literature. A literature is a record of human experience, and people have always been impelled to write down their impressions of life. They do so in diaries and letters, in pamphlets and books, and in essays poems, plays and stories. In this respect American literature is like any other. There are, however, many characteristics of American writing that make it different from all others. This has not always been true.
American literature began with the first English colonies in Virginia and New England. Colonists came to the New World to find religious freedom and prosperity. They came, however, in no spirit of revolution. They came as Englishmen, bringing with them the literary wealth of English legends, ballads, and poems and the richness of the English language. They were loyal to the crown. These settlers did not even call themselves Americans.
How the English colonists slowly came to think and act as “Americans” is a familiar and proud story. How their literature slowly grew to be “American” writing is less well known. The growth of American literature, however, follows closely the history of the nation from its beginning to the present time.
History
The first writings in English the North America were by adventurers and colonists for readers back in England. While few of these could be called literature, some journals and accounts did manifest a lasting quality and interest. Captain John Smith’s vigorous True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents…as Hath Happened in Virginia (published in England 1608) was the first personal account of life in the colonies. More sober histories of the period included John Winthrop’s Journal, which described life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1630 to 1649, and William Bradford’s History of Plimoth Plantation. Religious and instructional works, however, dominated colonial writing, with sermons and religious tracts making up most of the colonists’ reading matter. The first book published in the Puritan colony was the Bay Psalm Book (1740). The most important of the early religious writers were Cotton Mather (a 2-volume ecclesiastical history of New England), Jonathan Edwards (sermons and books), and John Woolman (a journal reflecting on his life in the Quaker belief). Poetry in colonial times also largely reflected religious and pious themes. Among the early poets were Michael Wigglesworth, Anne Bradstreet, and Edward Taylor.
Colonial literature
American writing began with the work of English adventurers and colonists in the New World chiefly for the benefit of readers in the mother country. Some of these early works reached the level of literature, as in the robust and perhaps truthful account of his adventures by Captain John Smith and the sober, tendentious journalistic histories of John Winthrop and William Bradford in New England. From the beginning, however, the literature of New England was also directed to the edification and instruction of the colonists themselves, intended to direct them in the ways of the godly. Some of the American literatures were pamphlets and writings extolling the benefits of the colonies to both a European and colonist audience. Captain John Smith could be considered the first American author with his works: A True Relation of Such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as Hath Happened in Virginia... (1608) and The General Histories of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624). Other writers of this manner included Daniel Denton, Thomas Ashe, William Penn, George Percy, William Strachey, Daniel Coxe, Gabriel Thomas, and John Lawson. The religious disputes that prompted settlement in America were also topics of early writing. A journal written by John Winthrop, The History of New England, discussed the religious foundations of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Edward Winslow also recorded a diary of the first years after the Mayflower's arrival. Other religiously influenced writers included Increase Mather and William Bradford, author of the journal published as a History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–47. Others like Roger Williams and Nathaniel Ward more fiercely argued state and church separation. And still others, like Thomas Morton, cared little for the church; Morton's The New English Canaan mocked the religious settlers and declared that the Native Americans were actually better people than the British. Puritan poetry was highly religious in nature, and one of the earliest books of poetry published was the Bay Psalm Book, a set of translations of the biblical Psalms; however, the translators' intention was not to create great literature but to created hymns that could be used in worship.Among lyric poets, the most important figures are Anne Bradstreet, who wrote personal poems about her family and homelife; pastor Edward Taylor, whose best poems, the Preparatory Meditations, were written to help him prepare for leading worship; and Michael Wigglesworth, whose best-selling poem, The Day of Doom, describes the time of judgment. Nicholas Noyes was also known for his doggerel verse.
Other late writings described conflicts and interaction with the Indians, as seen in writings by Daniel Gookin, Alexander Whitaker, John Mason, Benjamin Church, and Mary Rowlandson. John Eliot translated the Bible into the Algonquin language.
Of the second generation of New England settlers, Cotton Mather stands out as a theologian and historian, who wrote the history of the colonies with a view to God's activity in their midst and to connecting the Puritan leaders with the great heroes of the Christian faith. His best-known works include the Magnalia Christi Americana, the Wonders of the Invisible World and The Biblia Americana.
Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield represented the Great Awakening, a religious revival in the early 18th century that asserted strict Calvinism. Other Puritan and religious writers include Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, John Wise, and Samuel Willard. Less strict and serious writers included Samuel Sewall (who wrote a diary revealing the daily life of the late 17th century), and Sarah Kemble Knight.
New England was not the only area in the colonies; southern literature is represented by the diary of William Byrd of Virginia, as well as by The History of the Dividing Line, which detailed the expedition to survey the swamp between Virginia and North Carolina but which also comments on the different lifestyles of the Native Americans and the white settlers in the area. In a similar book, Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West, William Bartram described in great detail the Southern landscape and the Native American peoples whom he encountered; Bartram's book was very popular in Europe, being translated into German, French and Dutch.
As the colonies moved towards their break with England, perhaps one of the most important discussions of American culture and identity came from the French immigrant J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, whose Letters from an American Farmer addresses the question what is an American by moving between praise for the opportunities and peace offered in the new society and recognition that the solid life of the farmer must rest uneasily between the oppressive aspects of the urban life (with its luxuries built on slavery) and the lawless aspects of the frontier, where the lack of social structures leads to the loss of civilized living.
This same period saw the birth of African American literature, through the poetry of Phillis Wheatley and, shortly after the Revolution, the slave narrative of Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. This era also saw the birth of Native American literature, through the two published works of Samson Occom: A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul and a popular hymnbook, Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs, "the first Indian best-seller".
The revolutionary period also contained political writings, including those by colonists Samuel Adams, Josiah Quincy, John Dickinson, and Joseph Galloway, a loyalist to the crown. Two key figures were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin are esteemed works with their wit and influence toward the formation of a budding American identity. Paine's pamphlet Common Sense and The American Crisis writings are seen as playing a key role in influencing the political tone of the period.
During the revolution itself, poems and songs such as "Yankee Doodle" and "Nathan Hale" were popular. Major satirists included John Trumbull and Francis Hopkinson. Philip Morin Freneau also wrote poems about the war's course.
During the 18th century, writing shifted focus from the Puritanical ideals of Winthrop and Bradford to the power of the human mind and rational thought. The belief that human and natural occurrences were messages from God no longer fit with the new human centered world. Many intellectuals believed that the human mind could comprehend the universe through the laws of physics as described by Isaac Newton. The enormous scientific, economic, social, and philosophical, changes of the 18th century, called the Enlightenment, impacted the authority of clergyman and scripture, making way for democratic principles. The increase in population helped account for the greater diversity of opinion in religious and political life as seen in the literature of this time. In 1670, the population of the colonies numbered approximately 111,000. Thirty years later it was more than 250,000. By 1760, it reached 1,600,000. The growth of communities and therefore social life led people to become more interested in the progress of individuals and their shared experience on the colonies. These new ideals are accounted for in the widespread popularity of Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography.
The first work published in the Puritan colonies was the Bay Psalm Book (1640), and the whole effort of the divines who wrote furiously to set forth their views—among them Roger Williams and Thomas Hooker—was to defend and promote visions of the religious state. They set forth their visions—in effect the first formulation of the concept of national destiny—in a series of impassioned histories and jeremiads from Edward Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence (1654) to Cotton Mather's epic Magnalia Christi Americana (1702).
Even Puritan poetry was offered uniformly to the service of God. Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom (1662) was uncompromisingly theological, and Anne Bradstreet's poems, issued as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650), were reflective of her own piety. The best of the Puritan poets, Edward Taylor, whose work was not published until two centuries after his death, wrote metaphysical verse worthy of comparison with that of the English metaphysical poet George Herbert.
Sermons and tracts poured forth until austere Calvinism found its last utterance in the words of Jonathan Edwards. In the other colonies writing was usually more mundane and on the whole less notable, though the journal of the Quaker John Woolman is highly esteemed, and some critics maintain that the best writing of the colonial period is found in the witty and urbane observations of William Byrd, a gentleman planter of Westover, Virginia.
The Colonial Period spans the years 1607, when the English settlers founded Jamestown, Virginia, to 1765, when the British passed the Stamp Act and set off the American Revolution. Colonial works were influenced by British writers, since America was a colony during that period. The works consist largely of historical and teaching materials. You will find lots of letters, journals, narratives, and histories from that period. Common works include Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative, the histories of William Bradford and John Winthrop, the sermons of Jonathan Edwards, etc. A few poets emerged during this period: Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, and Michael Wigglesworth. The other notable voice of the period was Benjamin Franklin, memorable for his non-religious and non-historical prose.
Assessment
1. What was the first book published in America?
2. Who was considered the first American author? Enumerate his works.
3. What influenced colonial works? Why?
4. Briefly summarize American literature and Colonial literature.
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