二零一一年美国文学史第一讲.docVIP

二零一一年美国文学史第一讲 Colonial Literature Part I The Early Puritan Writers: William Bradford, Anne Street; Edward Taylor The earliest American literature was neither American nor really literature. It was not American because it was the work mainly of immigrants from England. It was not literature as we know it---in the form of poetry, essays, or fiction---but rather an interesting mixture of travel accounts and religious writings. The earliest colonial travel accounts are records of the perils and frustrations that challenged the courage of America’s first settlers. William Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation describes the cold greeting which the passengers on the ship of Mayflower received when they landed on the cost of America in 1620: Being thus received in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element … But here I cannot stand half amazed at this poor people’s present condition; and so I think will the reader, too, when he well considers the same Being thus passed the vast ocean, … they had no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; nor houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor. The American poets who emerged in the seventeenth century adapted the style of established European poets to the subject matter confronted in a strange, new environment. Anne Bradstreet was one such poet. Born and educated in England, Anne Bradstreet both admired and imitated several English poets. The influence of these English poets did not diminish when Mrs. Bradstreet, at age of eighteen, came to America in 1630. The environment in which she wrote, did not remain constant; a developed nation was exchanged for relative wilderness. That this exchange brought its hardships is evident in the