American Literature with Mr.

Brennan: Unit 1

UNIT 1:
Early American Literature and Puritanism: 1600 to 1750
U N I T O V E R V I E W


Primary Assessment: In a minimum of 750 words, analyze and evaluate how Puritan literature and their form reflect the beliefs and
values of Puritan society, and examine what Puritan values remain within, or have had significant influences on, present American identity.


Essential Questions for Class Discussion:

Who were the Puritans? Why did they travel to the New World?

What are the Puritans religious views? Do they have an optimistic or pessimistic view of life? Do they view man as inherently good,
evil, or somewhere in between?

What concept guided every aspect of Puritan life? What were the underlining motives for their chosen way of life? What was their
relationship with the divine? What is to have greater importance, the material or the spiritual? What are their views of work and
worldly success?

What role did fear play in Puritan society? How does a collective fear affect the group or individuals? What are the implications of
being ignorant as to whether you were one of Gods elect, while perceiving every outcome and phenomenon as a manifestation of
Gods grace or wrath? Is personal integrity more important than survival?

What is the Puritan dilemma? How does one come to terms with attempting to a live free from sin, while supporting the concept of
total depravity? How does one spend a life seeking salvation while believing that your spiritual fate was already predetermined?
Is hypocrisy a natural human flaw?

What are their political views? Who or what is the authority? What is to have greater importance, the individual or the community?
Why and how do religion, politics and persecution interact? Does a governing body have the right to dictate morality?

How were the beliefs and values of Puritan society conveyed within Puritan literature?

What do you make of a the Puritans fleeing religious persecution and seeking religious freedom, while simultaneously opposing
religious diversity and tolerance? Was the Puritan society a culture based on the principle of exclusion?

What is the Puritans enduring legacy? The United States has been criticized in recent years for assuming an air of moral superiority
and for trying to impose its opinion on the rest of the world. Can you find the seeds of these American attitudes in the earliest
American literature?

What was the form and function of Puritan plain style? How did this style reflect their core beliefs and values?


Unit Literature
Year Author Text Genre Pages
1980 Howard Zinn A People's History of the United States Non-Fiction 4.5
1624 John Smith The General History of Virginia Historical Narrative 2.5
2002 Donna Campbell Puritanism in New England Non-Fiction 2
c. 500 BCE anonymous King James Bible: Genesis Biblical 1
1620 William Bradford Of Plymouth Plantation Historical Narrative 2.5
1630 Jonathan Winthrop A Model of Christian Charity Sermon 2.5
1682 Mary Rowlandson A Narrative of the Captivity Captivity Narrative 3.5
c. 1650 Anne Bradstreet Select Poems Poetry 4
c. 1680 Edward Taylor Select Poems Poetry 1
1741 Jonathan Edwards Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Sermon 3.5
1693 Cotton Mather The Wonders of the Invisible World Non-Fiction 1.5
1953 Arthur Miller The Crucible Drama 38
1997 John Simkin McCarthyism Non-Fiction 1.5
1996 Arthur Miller Why I Wrote The Crucible Non-Fiction 2
2012 Matthew Hutson Still Puritans & Our Inner Puritans Non-Fiction 2


American Literature with Mr. Brennan: Unit 1
PURITAN BELIEFS

Total Depravity: Through Adam and Eve's fall (i.e. original sin)
every person is born innately sinful.

Predestination: The belief that humanity is damned; God
saves only a select few (i.e. the elect) for salvation, the
rest of mankind is doomed to spend eternity in hell.

Irresistible Grace: God's grace is freely given; it cannot be
earned or denied. After receiving grace, defined as the
saving and transfiguring power of God, you are reborn
and thenceforth full of power to do the will of God. God's
grace, or lack thereof, is manifested in human fortune,
natural phenomenon, etc.; failure to understand these
manifestations are due to human limitation.

Perseverance of the Saints: Those elected by God have full
power to interpret the will of God, and to live uprightly. If
anyone rejects grace after feeling its power in his life, he will
be going against the will of God.

Backsliding: The belief that saved believers, those with
visible signs of grace, can fall into temptation and become
sinners. To prevent this, believers were expected to avoid
excessive pride, be introspective, and pray constantly. Satan
was particularly interested in snaring such believers, as well
as those the Puritans thought weak (i.e. women, children,
the insane).

Manifest Destiny: John Winthrops claim that the Puritans
would establish a city upon a hill endowed the Puritans
with an ethnocentric righteousness, believing that their
expansion into the Americas was morally right and
justifiable, and that their values would serve as a superior
standard in which all other peoples and cultures should be
evaluated. They believed carrying on God's mission and
setting a shining example for the rest of the world. From
this beginning, the concept has had religious, social,
economic, and political consequences. (The words manifest
destiny were first used by editor John L. O'Sullivan in 1845.)


Basic Puritan Values
Self-Improvement
Self-Reliance
Self-Discipline (i.e. temperance, frugality, simplicity, humility)
Piousness (i.e. religious devotion)
Conformity (i.e. repression of emotion and opinion)
Communal Responsibility (i.e. self-sacrifice)
Industriousness (i.e. hard work, practicality, determination)
Education (i.e. to read the Bible)
Religious Freedom (but NOT religious diversity or tolerance)


The Function of Puritan Writers was (a) to transform a
mysterious Godmysterious because he is separate from
the world, (b) to make God more relevant to the universe,
and (c) to glorify God and show reverence for the Bible.

Puritan Plain Style is characterized by simple words and direct
statementsavoids decorative language and complex
sentencesoften referencing everyday objects and common
experiences; all of which centered on religious reverence.

KEY TERMS

Protestants: Christians who, unlike Catholics, reject the
authority of the Pope, and find authority in the Bible

Puritan Separatists: Protestant members who separated from
the Church of England (i.e. the Anglican Church) and fled
to the New World after facing religious persecution as a
result of their believing the church needed to be reformed
and restructured (purified) to be more Protestant.

Theocracy: a form of government in which a god is officially
recognized as the civil Ruler and policy is governed by
officials regarded as divinely guided, or is pursuant to
religious beliefs; NO separation between the Church and
the State (satisfies the need for moral justification for
private, public, and governmental acts)

Puritan Dilemma: Puritanism required that a man devote his
life to seeking salvation but told him he was helpless to do
anything but evil. Puritanism required that he rest his whole
hope in Christ but taught him that Christ would utterly
reject him unless before he was born God had foreordained
his salvation. Puritanism required that man refrain from sin
but told him he would sin anyhow. (Edmund Morgan)


LITERARY TERMS

Allusion: a reference designed to call something to mind without
mentioning it explicitly

Bias: prejudice in favor of or against one thing

Diction: word choice

Point of View: narrator's position in relation to the story being told

Participle Phrase: an adjective phrase that starts with a participle,
or a word formed from a verb that can be used as an adjective.
(e.g. Glazed with barbecue sauce, the chicken looked tasty.)

Personification: attributing human qualities to something nonhuman
(e.g. The tree stretched its branches toward the sun.)

Metaphor: applying a word or phrase to that which it is not literally
applicable (e.g. I fell through a trapdoor of depression.)

Objective: judgment not influenced by personal feelings or opinions

Rhetoric: language designed to have a persuasive effect

* Logos: rhetorical device, appealing to logic or reasoning

* Pathos: rhetorical device, appealing to passion or emotion

* Ethos: rhetorical device, reference speakers ethics or character

Style: the ways that the author describes events, objects, and ideas
(e.g. use of word choice, sentence structure, figurative language,
sentence arrangement to establish mood, images, and meaning)

Subjective: judgment influenced by personal feelings or opinions

Tone: the general attitude of a piece of writing (e.g. sarcastic, hopeful)