EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE TO 1700

NATIVE AMERICAN ORAL TRADITION 3 types of tales 1. Origin, Creation, or Emergence Myths

2. Hero Tales

3. Trickster Tales

6 nations of the Iroquois Confederation in the northeast (New York area)

Seneca, Cayuga, Onandaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Tuscarora

Iroquois

Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederation

IROQUOIS CONSTITUTION

CABEZA DE VACA (c. 1490–c. 1559)

His Relacion (1542) is an early captivity narrative, written as a report to Charles V of Spain and is the first European account of adventures in what is now the US (Florida and Texas)

De Vaca’s Christian conquistador attitude changed as he began to understand the natives better and learned their customs. He is seen as a “proto-anthropologist” (an early anthropologist because he observed and wrote about Indian culture: marriage, family relations, funerals, etc.

His advice to the Spanish: “Thence it may at once be seen, that to bring all these people to be Christians and to the obedience of the Imperial Majesty, they must be won by kindness, which is a way certain, and no other is.”

PURITAN DOCTRINE AND LITERATURE

• Pilgrims were Separatist, believed Church of England (Anglican) was beyond reform and

so disassociated from it; poor and less educated than Puritans; founded Plymouth Colony

• Puritans wanted to purify the Church of England from within; were wealthy, well-educated; founded Massachusetts Bay Colony

• Both groups are often referred to as Puritans, and both groups accepted the main doctrines of Calvinism:

• Natural depravity (all are both in original sin and can do nothing to save themselves.

• Unconditional election. God in his absolute sovereignty, damns some and saves others

• Predestination: God knows from the beginning who has been elected.

• Grace: Mankind cannot earn this saving grace, nor can he refuse it

• God continuously directs the affairs of mankind. (A thriving business might indicate divine favor and approval.)

• The Bible was the guide for virtually all aspects of life (See typology.)

WILLIAM BRADFORD 1590 - 1657

Of Plymouth Plantation

Written between 1630-1646, but not published until 1856 Tells of the Pilgrim (Separatist) voyage and settlement in

Plymouth, Massachusetts; the major history of the Pilgrims

Book I

1. The Voyage on the Mayflower, 1620 (65 days)

2. God’s providence: the foreseeing care and guidance of God or nature over the creatures of the earth; a manifestation of divine care or direction

3. Bradford’s Pause:

“ But here I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poor people’s present condition, and so I think will the reader, too, when he well considers the same. . . . Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men?”

WILLIAM BRADFORD, OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION (CONTINUED)

BOOK II

1. The Mayflower Compact, 1620 first governing document of Plymouth

2, Dealings with the Natives Samoset, Squanto, Massasoit Peace treaty with the Indians

3. Thomas Morton of Merrymount Pagan, “Atheism,” Maypole Gun dealing and alcohol use Encouraging indentured servants to leave the Pilgrims

4. Destruction of the Pequots, 1637

5. Bestiality and turning away from right living

THOMAS MORTON ()

The Puritans Observe Merrymount

His work is The New English Canaan (1637)

Morton is an Anglican, a Cavalier, (loyal to King Charles I) pro-Indian, anti-Puritan

Bradford vs. Morton

BRADFORD’S STYLE

• Plain Style. with little ornamentation

• Full of Biblical allusions• Humble, quiet, no showing off• Historical writing to show the

trials and experiences of the Pilgrims

MORTON’S STYLE• Ornate, flowery

• Full of classical Greek allusions, traditional in Cavalier poetry

• Shows his education

• Satirical, humorous

A reflection of the larger conflict betweenRoyalists (Cavaliers) vs. Roundheads (Parliamentarian / Puritans) in England at that time

Critic Kenneth Alan Hovey contrasts the two works of Bradford and Morton: “Both works are highly rhetorical, but where Bradford uses his rhetoric to magnify God and humbly to minimize his poor persecuted people, Morton uses his to satirize those same people and to flaunt the superiority of his own wit and learning.”

JOHN WINTHROP 1587 -1649

A sermon Winthrop gave aboard the Arbella, 1630

Most famous metaphor, still famous in the United States:

the City on the Hill

“A City upon a Hill” is a phrase from the parable of Salt and Light in Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:14, he tells his listeners,

"You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden."

The metaphor, as used by Winthrop,looks back to the Bible, but in Americanhistory, it looks forward as the basis of the philosophy of American exceptionalism.

“A Model of Christian Charity”

“’American exceptionalism’ is a term used to describe the belief that the United States is an extraordinary nation with a special role to play in human history; a nation that is not only unique but also superior. Alexis de Tocqueville was the first to use the term ‘exceptional’ to describe the United States and the American people in his classic work Democracy in America (1835–1840), but the idea of America as an exceptional entity can be traced back to the earliest colonial times. Jack P. Greene's analysis of a wealth of contemporary materials has established that by ‘the beginning of the nineteenth century the idea of America as an exceptional entity had long been an integral component in the identification of America.’ Many scholars of the belief in American exceptionalism argue that it forms one of the core elements of American national identity and American nationalism. Deborah Madsen, for example, contends that exceptionalism is ‘one of the most important concepts underlying modern theories of American cultural identity.’ It is a central part of the American belief system or what Benedict Anderson calls its ‘imagined community.’" - Encyclopedia of New American Nation

Optional read more: http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Exceptionalism.html#ixzz3CmQbjqdS

American Exceptionalism

Anne Bradstreet (1612 - 1672)

Themes

Motherhood

Love in Marriage

Weaned Affections

Humility

Feminism

Death

The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650)Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning (1678)

EDWARD TAYLOR (1642-1729)

Poetic Style

• Craftsmanship and careful revision

• Subject: the relationship between God and Man

• Relays abstract ideas through concrete imagery

• Everyday comparisons: spinning wheel, bowling, God as master craftsman, domestic imagery

Mary Rowlandson (1637-1711)

• Mary Rowlandson travelled some 150 miles, from Lancaster to Menamaset then north to Northfield and across the Connecticut river to meet with King Philip/Metacomet himself, sachem of the Wampanoags.  Next she traveled up into southwestern New Hampshire, south to Menamaset, and north to Mount Wachusett

Themes• God’s Providence

• Redemption of sinners

• Suffering and trials of a Christian / typology

(comparison to Israelites, Biblical figures)

• Puritan attitude toward Indians

• Jeremiad (The term jeremiad refers to a sermon

or another work that accounts for the misfortunes

of an era as a just penalty for great social and

moral evils, but holds out hope for changes that

will bring a happier future.  It derives from the

Old Testament prophet Jeremiah)

A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682)

Overview of the Captivity Narrative According to Richard Slotkin, "In [a captivity narrative] a single individual, usually a woman, stands

passively under the strokes of evil, awaiting rescue by the grace of God. The sufferer represents the

whole, chastened body of Puritan society; and the temporary bondage of the captive to the Indian is a

dual paradigm-- of the bondage of the soul to the flesh and the temptations arising from original sin,

and of the self-exile of the English Israel from England. In the Indian's devilish clutches, the captive

had to meet and reject the temptation of Indian marriage and/or the Indian's "cannibal" Eucharist. To

partake of the Indian's love or of his equivalent of bread and wine was to debase, to un-English the

very soul. The captive's ultimate redemption by the grace of Christ and the efforts of the Puritan

magistrates is likened to the regeneration of the soul in conversion. The ordeal is at once threatful of

pain and evil and promising of ultimate salvation. Through the captive's proxy, the promise of a similar

salvation could be offered to the faithful among the reading public, while the captive's torments

remained to harrow the hearts of those not yet awakened to their fallen nature" (Regeneration Through

Violence).

CAPTIVITY NARRATIVE

• Between 1675 and 1763, approximately 1, 641 New Englanders were taken hostage (Vaughan and Richter, p. 53); and during the decades-long struggle between whites and Plains Indians in the mid-nineteenth century, hundreds of women and children were captured. (White, p. 327:

Vaughan, Alden T., and Daniel K. Richter. "Crossing the Cultural Divide: Indians and New Englanders, 1605-1763." Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 90 (1980): 23-99.

White, Lonnie J. "White Women Captives of Southern Plains Indians, 1866-1875." Journal of the West 8 (1969): 327-54.

REASONS FOR INDIANS’ ACTIONS

•revenge •ransom •replacement of tribal numbers decimated by war and disease

NARRATIVE AUTHORS’ RHETORICAL PURPOSES

•Religious expression •Justification of westward expansion •Nineteenth-century: cultural symbol of American national heritage •Popular literature •Reinforcement of stereotypes

STEREOTYPES

a. Spanish: Indians as brutish beasts  b. French: Indians as souls needing redemption  c. English in Virginia: innocent exotics  d. Puritans: Satanic threat to religious utopia

THEMES•Fears of cannibalism •Fears of scalping •Hunter-predator myth: captive as cultural mediator between savagery and civilization •Judea capta, for Puritans: Israel suffering under Babylonian captivity. •Freudian view: captivity becomes adoption •Myths

LITERARY CONVENTIONS•Abruptly brought from state of protected innocence into confrontation with evil. •Forced existence in alien society. •Unable to submit or resist. •Yearns for freedom, yet fears perils of escape. •Struggle between assimilation and maintaining a separate cultural identity. •Condition of captive parallels suffering of all lowly and oppressed. •Growth in moral and spiritual strength. •Deliverance.

PATTERN / STRUCTURE

•Separation: attack and capture •Torment, ordeals of physical and mental suffering •Transformation (accommodation, adoption)

Metacom, Son of Massasoit Cover page of Rowlandson’s Narrative

EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 1700-1800

ELIZABETH ASHBRIDGE 1713-1755

Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge

(written in 1754, 1774 first publication)

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2980003W/Peculiar_power

Genre: spiritual autobiography

“Spiritual autobiography is a non-fictional form which rose to prominence in seventeenth-century England, although its roots can be traced as far back as such works of the early Christian tradition as St. Augustine’s Confessions. The form’s basic concern is to trace the progress of an individual believer from a state of sin to a state of grace, where the conviction takes hold that salvation has been guaranteed by God. Given the concentration on the individual, the form appealed most to Protestants, in particular the more militant sectarian movements (Baptists, Quakers, etc.) who broke away from the Church of England over the course of the seventeenth century - a period of marked religious division in English history.”

The Literary Encyclopedia: Exploring literature, history, and culture http://litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1377

ELIZABETH ASHBRIDGE (CONTINUED)

Major Themes, Historical Perspectives, and Personal Issues

Choice between husband and conscience

Threat to patriarchal order

Conflict in religious doctrine between Anglicans and Quakers

Quest for religious freedom

“Elizabeth Ashbridge’s Account underscores the importance of life-writing as a tool of female vindication in a patriarchal culture. For its candor and emotional power, for the integrity of the religious sensibility it conveys, and for its illuminating portrayal of domestic relations in colonial America, the narrative merits a significant place in our literary history.”

- Liahna Babener and Wendy Martin The Heath Anthology of American Literature, 5th edition

“Timeline

1732: Ashbridge sailed to New York as an indentured servant, owned first by a woman in the slave trade and later by the ship's captain.

1735: After a failed attempt to travel to England, they moved to Boston in 1735, then back to Rhode Island later that year, where Ashbridge once again joined the Church of England.

1740: Ashbridge’s religious beliefs caused much turmoil in her marriage, and, in a drunken stupor, Sullivan enlisted himself as a soldier and left for Cuba in 1740.

1746: On May 7, 1746, Elizabeth married Aaron Ashbridge, a well-known member of the Quaker community in Chester County, Pennsylvania.

1752: After becoming an authoritative speaker at the Goshen, Pennsylvania Quaker meetings, she appeared with other prominent Quakers such as John Woolman, Jane Fenn Hoskens, and Anthony Benezet at the General Spring Meeting of ministers and elders in Philadelphia in 1752.

1753: In 1753 she became a recorded minister of the church and, with the consent of her husband, traveled through England and Ireland speaking at meeting houses testifying to her spiritual journey.

1755: Elizabeth Ashbridge died in 1755.” --“Elizabeth Ashbridge,” Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Ashbridge

Pontiac

“Pontiac, an excellent military strategist, instigated and led the greatest Native American uprising ever faced by the British in colonial North America. His call for a pan-tribal alliance nearly succeeded in stopping white encroachment onto Native American lands, and served as a model forlater resistance efforts led by Little Turtle, Tecumseh, and Black Hawk.” 

"Pontiac." The American Mosaic: The American Indian Experience. ABC-CLIO, 2014. Web. 12 Sept. 2014.

Samson Occom

• Samson Occom was the first Native American to write and publish a work in the English language and was a noted Christian preacher in the 18th century.

• Occum was a famous Mohegan Christian Native American who became the first formally trained and ordained Christian Native minister. He was known as "minister to all the tribes of New England" and "the great Indian man who takes care of Indians." Occum was converted to Christianity in 1741 by Reverend Eleazor Wheelock and educated in Wheelock's family, studying English, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

Logan “In 1774, a series of bloody incidents occurred between Indians and whites living in the Ohio River valley. According to an account by Thomas Jefferson in his Notes on Virginia (1784-85), white settlers were outraged by robberies committed by Indians. In retaliation, white soldiers killed many innocent Indians, including the family of Logan, chief of the Mingo Indians, who was known as a friend of the whites. Led by Logan, the Indians launched a war against the white settlers, scalping a large number of innocent men, women, and children, but were finally defeated by the Virginia militia in October 1774.    After the decisive battle, Logan refused to join the other chiefs as a suppliant before the victorious whites. Instead,he sent the following speech to Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia. When Lord Dunmore returned from the expedition against the Indians, he brought the speech with him, and according to Jefferson, ‘It became the theme of every conversation in Williamsburg.’ It was printed in the Virginia Gazette, reprinted in papers across the continent and even in publications in Great Britain.    Jefferson reprinted the speech in his Notes on Virginia to refute those Europeans who ‘supposed there is something in the soil, climate, and other circumstances of America, which occasions animal nature to degenerate, not excepting even the man, native or adoptive, physical or moral.’ Jefferson offered Logan's speech as proof "of ,the talents of the aboriginals of this country, and particularly of their eloquence.’ He asserted ‘that Europe had never produced anything superior to this morsel of eloquence.’"

Native American Oratory

Native American leader Tecumseh, who combined military skill and oratory brilliance to fashion one of the biggest Pan-Indian alliances, is fatally wounded at the Battle of the Thames in October 1813, during the War of 1812.

Red Jacket “Red Jacket considered himself, first and foremost, an orator. An

avowed traditionalist, he is most famous for his speeches

denouncing the presence of Christian missionaries on the

reservations and for opposing the sale of Indian lands. Never

actually appointed a sachem, he nonetheless became a very

influential Seneca chief. Red Jacket's speeches are among the most

compelling explanations of [Native American] sovereignty in U.S.

history. In addition to his significance as a political figure in the

early national period, Red Jacket became popular because he was an

extraordinarily dynamic speaker. His speeches, of which dozens are

extant, are notable for their sarcasm and disarming humor. “

“Red Jacket's most famous speech, a reply to the Reverend Jacob Cram in 1805, was one of several speeches he gave in the early 1800s that explained why the Indians did not want Christian missionaries in their midst. The speech is noteworthy for his condensed history of white–Native relations and his objection to Cram's attempt to "force your religion upon us." Although the level of sarcasm is difficult to gauge, Red Jacket told Cram that the Senecas might ask him back only if they saw that Christianity could soften the habits of the white frontiersman living on their borders”.”

“Red Jacket.” The American Indian Experience: The American Mosaic. ABC-CLIO Solutions. Web. 9 August 2014.