美国文学简史-第一部分-Colonial-American.pptVIP

The Literature of the Colonial America and of Reason and Revolution 1.1 Historical Background In 1492, Christopher Columbus found the new continent called America. There were many immigrants: Spanish (they built the first town on the new continent); Dutch (they built New York city at the beginning stage); French (today still lots of people’s mother tongue is French in North America); English (they first settled in Jamestown and Virginia in 1607) In1620, the famous “May Flower” shipped 102 Puritans to Plymouth. thinking Q: Transportation is not convenient, why so many immigrants left their hometown and came to such a remote place as America? 1.2 Puritan Thought Puritanism: the practices and beliefs of the Puritans (Calvinists) ◆ Puritans believed most doctrines preached by?John Calvin, a theologian, so they were also called Calvinists. ◆ Puritans wanted to “purify the church” to its original state, because they thought the church was corrupted and had too many rituals. ◆ To be a Puritan: taking religion as the most important thing; living for glorifying God; believing predestination, original sin, total depravity, limited atonement ◆ Life style of Puritans: pious, austere of taste, diligent and thrift, rigid sense of morality, self-reliant. American Puritanism: the practices and beliefs of the American Puritans ◆ American Puritans were originally members of a division of the Protestant Church, who came into existence in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I. ◆ They were a group of serious, religious people, advocating highly religious and moral principles. They wanted to purify their religious beliefs and practices. ◆ American Puritans’ lives were extremely disciplined and hard. ◆ They were idealists. They accepted the doctrine of predestination, original sin and total depravity, and limited atonement through a special infusion of grace from God. But in the grim struggle for survival after their arrival in America, they became more an