unit 1 美国文学.docVIP

Colonial Period …the period stretching roughly from the settlement of North America in the early seventeenth century through the end of the eighteenth. (常耀信: “Introduction”) The colonial period covers almost the entirety of the 17th century and a great portion of the 18th century. Marking 1620 as the beginning of the colonial settlement allows us to see Puritanism a major influence in colonial America, although this choice is, admittedly, arbitrary, considering that the settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, had already taken place thirteen years earlier, in 1607. 1763 is generally considered as the symbolic end of the colonial period. (童明：12) The American Literature of Colonial Period Puritans American Puritanism Enlightenment Movement Characteristics Representative Writers Reading and Discussion Puritan History: Roman CatholicismThe Church of England (Protestant National ChurchPuritanism The term “Puritan” has been applied to those settlers who originally were devout members of the Church of England American Puritans To them, religion was a matter of primary importance. They made it their chief business to see that man lived and thought and acted in a way which tended to the glory of God. Over the years, the Puritans built a way of life that was in harmony with their somber religion, one that stressed hard work, thrift, piety, and sobriety. These were the Puritan values that dominated much of the earliest American writings. In the grim struggle for survival that followed immediately after their arrival in America, the character of the people underwent a significant change. Pushing the frontiers with them as they moved further and further westward, they became more and more preoccupied with business and profits. They became, in a word, more practical, as indeed they had to be. American Puritans “He was a visionary who never forgets that two plus two equals four; he was a soldier of Jehovah who never came out on the losing side of a bargain… . He was a practic