45028982 Puritan Lit and Philosophical Narratives

8/6/2019 45028982 Puritan Lit and Philosophical Narratives

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Bibliography

Ann Bradstreet, Contemplations, As weary pilgrim Edward Taylor, Prologue Edgar Allan Poe, The black cat, The pit and the pendulum, The fall of the house of Usher Nathaniel Hawthorne, The scarlet letter H. D. Thoreau, Walden (Solitude) HermanMelville, Bartleby, the Scrivener Walt Whitman, Song of myself (1, 6, 16, 21, 24, 50, 52) Emily Dickinson, I cannot live with you, Wild nights, wild nights, Great streets of silence led away, I heard a buzz fly when I died, This was a poet,

it is that F. S. Fitzgerald, The great Gatsby, E. Hemingway, The sun also risesRobert Frost, The road not taken, Stopping by woods on a snowy evening, Birches

, For once then something William Carlos Williams, The rose, Landscape with thefall of Icarus, Pastoral William Faulkner, The bear, Go down, Moses


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Some of the earliest coloniesJamestown (James Forte, James Towne, and James Cittie ), Virginia, may 1607, pioneers, gentlemen, craftsmen, (104 settlers initially). Sailed under the command of

Christopher Newport, the colony eventually led by Captain John Smith.


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Plymouth, 1620, took hold under governor William Bradford; the Pilgrims, membersof a separatist group, led initially by Robert Browne, fled to Leyden, Holland,in 1609, and travelled on the famed Mayflower to America. According to Brownes b

elief, the true church is a local body of genuine believers, united by a voluntary covenant.


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Massachusetts Bay (16281643), the Great Migration (1630, led by John Winthrop, 900 settlers on 11 ships). Incorporated earlier settlements such as Salem (1626),

Charlestown, and eventually, Plymouth Bay. Puritans, members of the Church of England, who sought to purify the English Church and to modify its forms, while remaining within it.


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Insecurity & discovery: a literature of journals, histories of either hardship andendurance, or of adventure: Cpt. John Smith, The General History of Virginia (162

4), A Description of New England (1616) William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation(1630-1647); William Byrd (The Secret Diary of William Byrd, begun in 1709, wri

tten in code)> a later period of the colonies


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The foundational narratives set in contrast the fracture between colonist and pilgrim and/or puritan, which is crucial in the history of early American colonies.Smiths colonist: a cross-section of the English society, the King James charter calls them Knights, Gentlemen, Merchants and other adventurers. (John Barths The Sotweed Factor). Bradfords pilgrim: a child of God Saints (Separatists) vs. strangers (Church of England members): a distinction often explained by Bradford in relation

to the concept of lust (explain), which is itself moulded on the antinomy betweenthe profane and the saintly


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The Mayflower compact: for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith > the creation of a Civil Body Politic to frame such laws as they might need, to

which they promised "all due submission and obedience." The beginnings of a very slow secularization and individual enterprise that would shape the American social body for centuries to come: from the Common Course and Condition to private property.


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Puritans are of Calvinist persuasion. Calvins five points therefore pervade their imaginary and written culture:Total depravity. Man is inherently sinful, and unable to work out his own salvation. Unconditional election. God chooses those whom he will save. The elect versus the preterite. Limited atonement. Christ died only for those to be saved, not

for everyone (non-Catholic, i.e. universalist outlook). Irresistible grace. Graceis for the Puritans the saving, transfiguring power of God that may or may not

be bestowed upon Man. Perseverance of the saints. The elect have the power to dothe will of God to live uprightly to the end.


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The Puritan forma mentis is thus centered around salvation (the yearning for it,the ways to attain, the pitfalls that accompany mans life on Earth, the reward o

f a home in Heaven), salvation that is placed in the impenetrable will of God butthat may be only fostered in the community of the saints. A communal ethos, a communal drive for redemption. A history of dissent within the movement itself: Roger Williams, who proclaimed the liberty of worship, or Anne Hutchinson, who, in the name of the same creed, spoke of a covenant of grace, as opposed to theocraticoppression: the free interpretation of the sacred text (in the eyes of the religious authorities > antinomianism).


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Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672)Born in Northampton, England, married when she was 16 to Simon Bradstreet, a 25year old assistant in the Massachusetts Bay Company, emigrated to America in 1630. The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, By a Gentlewoman of Those Part (1650) Second edition in 1678


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It is somewhat surprising that the first notable poet in American literature isa woman, and furthermore, a Puritan, keeping in mind the restrictions that Puritans enforced on expression, let alone free expression. Bradstreet speaks of and for herself in her poetry, that she creates, out of virtually nothing, a poetic subjectivity, that she coherently proposes a fully constituted poetic subject. Her

poetry, although bathed in the Puritan frame of mind, is not ancillary to theology, in the manner in which the writings of her contemporaries (for instance Michael Wigglesworth) are.


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The Contemplationsy

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A long poem (33 stanzas), considered by most critics one of Bs chief achievements. The concept of contemplation, highly significant for Bs poetry, and, by extension, for a poetic way of understanding Puritan beliefs (as opposed to an authoritarian, theocratic understanding). Contemplation is a relation or a function that

requires a special disposition of the senses (Rapt were my senses at this delectable view), which, although somewhat poetically conventional (the rapture occurs

at the viewing of a golden evening in autumn), and which sends the gaze on a journey that will eventually reach the status of contemplation.


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While contemplation means transported gaze, the question is transported where?. Internalization of the gaze. Contemplation is a shift from the outer to the inner world, in order to seize the meaning of the whole in a double-vision. Just as theperceptible world is subject to sensuous allegory, the spiritual order (that which transcends history, since it remains unchanged through the vast panorama of the ages) may be rendered by spiritual allegory


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This transport (which seems to contaminate the whole of creation) in fact removes the gaze from the real, it sends it further away: Our life compare we with their length of days. Who to the tenth of theirs doth now arrive? And though thus short, we shorten many ways, Living so little while we are alive. In eating, drinking, sleeping, vain delight So unawares comes on perpetual night And puts all pleasures vain unto eternal flight.


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Contemplation (of creation, of history) is incomplete, perhaps futile, if it does not manage to reach meditation. the scope of the dynamic between contemplationand meditation is to prepare, this is a very real practice of setting the scene

for a redemptive future placed beyond death. If such an understanding of contemplation means perhaps for us the abandoning of the private self, it should be said, that for the Puritan, the self is rescued by the moral sense obtained through meditation via contemplation.


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Cotton Mather (1663-1728)

The Wonders of the Invisible World, 1692 An account of the witch trials at SalemThe purpose: I have indeed set my self to Countermine the

whole Plot of the Devil against New-England

The New Englanders are a people of God settled in those which were once the devilsterritories, and it may be easily supposed that the devil was exceedingly disturbed when he perceived such a people here accomplishing the promise of old madeunto our blessed Jesus.


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These our poor Afflicted Neighbours, quickly after they become Infected and Infested with these Daemons, arrive to a Capacity of Discerning those which they conceive the Shapes of their Troublers; and notwithstanding the Great and Just Suspicion, that the Daemons might Impose the Shapes of Innocent Persons in their Spectral Exhibitions upon the Sufferers (which may perhaps prove no small part of the Witch-plot in the issue), yet many of the Persons thus Represented being Examined, several of them have been Convicted of a very Damnable Witchcraft.


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Magnalia Christi Americana (1702)The great works of Christ in America, again an ecclesiastical history , a historical miscellany A metaphysical-theological history of the New World, with a Puritan-Calvinist doctrine upon the history of the colonies, in the frame of a larger moral fable : What is of note is the clear and precise philosophical prose, the diction in which ideas are advanced in elegant argument, spiced up with quotationsfrom the Bible


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There is a moral necessity that governs the community and its affairs, a physiology, or a characteriology (e.g. Bonifacius, 1710), an attempt at a design of doinggood in ones life With Mather, one notices the beginnings of secularization in the

sense that, for him, not every detail may be explained theologically. The good, while undoubtedly proceeding from God, it is also a value that is formed and transacted between humans, and which can be given theoretical expression. The rudiments of an social ethics can be found in Cotton Mathers essays. the good neighbour


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Jonathan Edwards (1663-1728)

Personal Narrative (1739-42), a spiritual biography, the souls journey towards its calling (that of a minister). The righteousness of the path toward God set incontrast the failures of the human heart. Edwards world: a world where every thing and every relation is determined and over-determined in a teleological way: all purposes have been designed in advance, and all designs have been provided with the resources to accomplish that purpose, and the only hints of doubt are notin the natural world, but in the moral order. There is the possible space of failure: the human heart may fail.


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Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)a chain of no security in the fate of man: always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards

with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, youwould immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf,and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you andkeep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly; the sun does not willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan


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Images or Shadows of Divine Things, a collection of notes unpublished in his lifetime similarities between the spiritual and visible worlds: elusive analogies The way of a cat with a mouse it has taken captive is a lively emblem of the way of the Devil with many wicked men. A mouse is a foul, unclean creature, a fit type of a wicked man. There are innumerable possible semiotic analogies between thevisible world and the divine things.


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Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Poor Richards Alamanack, published under the name Richard Saunders (1732) A philosophical DIY: pearls of wisdom, proverbs, dictums, recipes, advice, a patchwork of information, entertainment and guidance for the masses to make the individual exploit his own resources better, for his own education and advancement The Junto:a group of like minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community. The extended form of this developmentis captured by Franklin in his enormously influential Autobiography, published after his death and intended primarily as a pedagogic narrative for his son.


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1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its

time. 4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. 6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly. 8. JUSTICE.

Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty. 9. MODERATION. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think theydeserve. 10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation. 11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. 12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to

dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.


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I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues. I rul'd each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for the day. I cross'd these columns with

thirteen red lines, marking the beginning of each line with the first letter ofone of the virtues, on which line, and in its proper column, I might mark, by alittle black spot, every fault I found upon examination to have been committed

respecting that virtue upon that day.


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It will be remark'd that, tho' my scheme was not wholly without religion, therewas in it no mark of any of the distingishing tenets of any particular sect. I had purposely avoided them; for, being fully persuaded of the utility and excellency of my method, and that it might be serviceable to people in all religions, and intending some time or other to publish it, I would not have any thing in itthat should prejudice any one, of any sect, against it. I purposed writing a little comment on each virtue, in which I would have shown the advantages of possessing it, and the mischiefs attending its opposite vice; and I should have calledmy book THE ART OF VIRTUE, because it would have shown the means and manner ofobtaining virtue, which would have distinguished it from the mere exhortation to

be good.


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Michel Guillaume St. Jean de Crvecoeur

J. Hector St. John (1735-1813) 1782, Letters from an American farmer Letter III;What is an American? Old Europe/New America

Social composition Community in relation to geography Ideology Religion Mans relation to nature

In this great American asylum, the poor of Europe have by some means met together.


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Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and starves, whose life is a continualscene of sore affliction or pinching penury; can that man call England or any o

ther kingdom his country? A country that had no bread for him, whose fields procured him no harvest, who met with nothing but the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with jails and punishments; who owned not a single foot of the extensive surface of this planet? No! urged by a variety of motives, here they came. Every thing has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode of living, a

new social system; here they are become men: in Europe they were as so many useless plants, wanting vegetative mould, and refreshing showers; they withered, and were mowed down by want, hunger, and war; but now by the power of transplantation, like all other plants they have taken root and flourished!


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What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in

no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from

the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the newrank he holds The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labour, he has passed to toils of a verydifferent nature, rewarded by ample subsistence. --This is an American.


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Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)

Nature (1836) Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers.It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?


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The original vs. the mediated Transcendentalism is an effort to regain the originallink to the cosmos: Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream

around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, newmen, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.


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total freedom and detachment -> belonging You must see nature in order to understand it, and then discuss it philosophically, and, as E says, very few adult persons can see nature. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blitheair, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become atransparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate

than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.


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An Idealistic progression from the sensible to the intelligible: from the aesthetic (say, a discussion of the aspects of beauty) to the spiritual A holistic intuition (Es non-dualism) So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, -- What is truth? and of the affections, -- What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. Then shall come to pass what my poet said; `Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence of spirit; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile, it is obedient. Every spirit

builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect.


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Self-reliance (1840) The individual shapes the universal, by externalizing his inmost convictions: To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true foryou in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. Speak your latent

conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets ofthe Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books andtraditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn todetect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within,more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. everyone who would be a

man must by necessity be a nonconformist It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.


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Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Civil Disobedience (1849) - disenchantment with the American government, and with government in general (That government is best which governs not at all) The mass

of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or

of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth andstones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.


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It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, butonly his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe aftermy own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to have this way or that by massesof men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says

to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money?


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45028982 Puritan Lit and Philosophical Narratives

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