The Colonial Period Of American Literature

However its creation of a single mindset is certainly questionable. For instance, the "other" of Puritan society is not represented. What is to be said of the dispossessed, the minorities of all types, the non-Puritans, and women in Miller's recounting of Puritan thought? Miller omits them from his account. One suspects that including their perspectives might have altered Miller's account. His concept of Puritanism was essentially the same one that was offered by the elites of early New England. Nonetheless this work, though intellectually demanding, represents a seminal statement in American, if not Christian, historiography and is worth of consideration for students of history, including American, Christian and religious

As the new world struggled to gain impendence from its mother country, Britain, native authors also try to develop their own style of writings. It quickly became evident that the search for a native literature became a national obsession. Then with the triumph of American independence, many at the time saw this as a divine sign that America and her people were destined for greatness. Greatness came with a strong nation and thousands of poems and stories that still shape our nation. The recent revolution greatly expressed the heart of the American people. However, it would take another fifty years of development throughout American before it produced the first great generation of American writers such as, Washington Irving, Ralph

Along with this, their faith was based of that of the super natural world. They could

“ The Puritan society was a man’s world” (Life 1). In the early eighteenth century in Colonial America, the roles men accepted of women followed a strict guideline. Those guidelines kept women in certain boundaries. Perspectives on women within the Puritan community consisted of two features. The first was that women were considered to be “the

In Chapter 4, we discuss how the Puritanism changed New England during the seventeenth century. Puritans immigrated to North America to escape the hardships and persecution they faced in England, because of the English reformation. They wanted to form a new, orderly Puritan version in New England. However, many of the New England colonists were not Puritans, Puritanism remained a strong influence in New England’s politics, religion, and community. Many of the New England colonists,settled in new towns and tried to steer clear of the Puritan religion. Eventually to the fatal decline of Puritanism in New England.

When I think of America, I think of freedom. We live in a country where we can do what we choose. We can express our opinions and live our own lives. Individuals can form their own individual beliefs and they can do what they want and pursue what they wish. They can play basketball, go to school, get a job, have a family, buy a house, or go to church. We are free. We have opportunity to be whatever we want to make ourselves. When you ask, what is an American? I find it no different to ask, what is freedom? America and freedom are intertwined and this relationship is evident in American literature.

Campbell, Donna M. "Puritanism in New England." Literary Movements. Dept. of English, Washington State University.4 Jul. 2013. Web. 16 Dec. 2015

Colonial American society can be described as greatly religious, regardless of the decade or century. However, different political, social and literary eras greatly altered colonists’ view of religion and God. Puritanism and Rationalism were considered the two most significant religious eras during the 17th and 18th centuries. Literature changed with religious and social change. The most influential literary works during the Colonial era were those reflecting the social ideologies at the time. Puritans in colonial America used strict religious blueprints as guidelines for their everyday life. They believed that man existed solely to glorify and praise God. The ultimate goal was to purify and rid society of evil. They ran their court system

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," says the Declaration of Independence. This phrase encompasses three major values shown throughout early American literature. The strong belief in religion, freedom, and a strong will for a better life. Each piece had one or more of these themes within them.

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 1: Puritanism & Colonial Period: to 1700." PAL: Perspectives in American Literatur

Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the most important authors in the history of American literature and the genre of Romanticism or Dark Romanticism, due to his unique style of writing and his focus upon subjects of Puritan religion and the unknown. I consider Hawthorne an important author, due to the fact that he skillfully and accurately based his fictional writings upon happenings of colonial times, was one of the first authors to display unfortunate outcomes for his characters’ immoral choices according to Puritan beliefs, and wrote of things that were considered taboo in his time, such as witchcraft, scientific innovation and experimentation. I strongly believe that Hawthorne’s influence for his writings were his Puritan ancestral background, his fascination with Puritan beliefs, and his interest in what was considered the unknown such as witchcraft and science. According to the Norton Anthology Textbook Vol. B, Nathaniel Hawthorne was “born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804” (370). Hawthorne belonged “to a family whose ancestral roots were tied to Puritan history, with his family being among the first settlers of Massachusetts and having one of his relatives serve as a judge during the Salem witch trials” (370). Hawthorne, as a young boy, “had a particular interest in writings such as John Bunyan’s Puritan allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress, and by his mid-teens he took interest in British novelists such as Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollet, William Godwin, and Sir Walter Scott”

The prospect of having religious freedom was enough reason for the Puritans to pick up their lives and begin a journey across the Atlantic. The Puritans lived and breathed their religion, which was prominent in their cultural and political beliefs. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter captures these ways with a beautiful story about a young woman and her struggle with the Puritanism expectations. American Puritanism, with its strict religious beliefs, swept over the New England colonies during the seventeenth century.

Puritan Literature Puritan literature is full of the Puritan values and beliefs. One of those beliefs is that only by following strict religious rules can a person have God’s approval and get to heaven. “Of Plymouth Plantation”, “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God”, and The Crucible show this belief. “Of Plymouth Plantation” talks about a proud and very ungodly young man, one of the seamen, of a lusty, able body, which made him more arrogant. He condemned the poor, sick people aboard the ship and cursing them daily with angry words.

The colonial period in the United States all started when people starting immigrating to Boston in the 1630s. With high articulation of Puritan cultural ideas, the New England colonies have been regarded as the center of early American literature. In class we only talked about a few of the writing throughout the period but in this paper, I am going to tell you about the colonial period as a whole.

Early American literature may be said to begin with the Colonial period. John Smith and John Winthrop are two examples of the types of writing at this period: the former kept a romantic journal of his adventures in the New World; the latter kept a journal (or history) of life in New England, where religious matters were of utmost importance. The Puritans had come seeking a life free from religious persecution (which, they ironically brought with them however, as their descendent Nathaniel Hawthorne would show in The Scarlet Letter).