美国文学9-文史 The Age of Romanticism.docVIP

The History of American Literature Part One: Early American Literature (1620-1770) Chapter 1: The Seventeenth Century Literature (also called the colonial literature) American Puritanism: American Puritanism was one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American literature. It has become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, rather than a set of tenets, so much a part of the national cultural atmosphere that the American breathes, that we may state with a degree of safety that, without some understanding of Puritanism, there can be no real understanding of America and its literature. (Just like the influence of Confucian doctrine upon the ideology of Chinese people) Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the Puritans. The Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church, who came into existence in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King JamesⅠ. The first settlers who became the founding fathers of the American nation were quite a few of them Puritans. They came to America out of various reasons, but it should be remembered that they were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. As the word itself hints, Puritans wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. They felt that the church of England was too close to the Church of Rome in doctrine form of worship, and organization of authority. The American Puritans back in England, were idealists, believing that the church should be restored to complete “purity”. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement (or the salvation of selected few) through a special infusion of grace from God. But in the grim struggle for survival that followed immediately after their arrival in America, they became more and more practical, they became more and more preoccupied with business and profits, as indeed they had to be. Puritans’ lives were extremely disciplined