参考译文 - 河北师范大学教务处.doc

Section One American Poetry of the Colonial Period I. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) 1. Life story Anne Bradstreet was the first noteworthy woman writer in the early stage of American literary history. The collection of her poems, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America, which appeared in 1650, though in London, has always been regarded as one of the earliest publications by a settler of the New World. Many of her poems are personal in subject and often works meditating on domestic topics from a religious point of view. Her talent to capture the colonial experience in poetry established her place as one of Americas most outstanding early writers. As most early English settlers of the 17th century, Anne was born in England into a noble but very religious Puritanical family. In England, she was well educated and married to Simon Bradstreet at the age of 16. Two years later (1630) the whole family migrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and settled down there. Annes father later became the governor of the colony, and her husband, the judge. But Anne kept working as a housewife, for she was by then a mother of 8 children. Life for early settlers was harsh and hard. However, Anne managed to spare time for reading classical works and poetry writing, mainly on the theme of domestic life in the new world. In 1647, a distant relative brought some of Anne Bradstreets poems to England and had them published in 1650 under the title of The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America, quite without Anne Bradstreet’s knowledge, and these poems were soon well received in Britain. The poems in the first collection were also agreeable to the taste of American readers. 2. On Anne Bradstreets Poems Anne Bradstreet wrote in a traditional way to record the colonial experience, to express her apperception of private life, and to meditate over the Puritan doctrines. Besides, as an early poet, Anne Bradstreet frequently focused on the discussion on such natural facts as the four