AMERICAN LITERATURE,

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Jul 24, 2017 · 4 min read

literature written in the English language by inhabitants of the U.S.; it includes the literature written by residents of the 13 original colonies.

AMERICAN LITERATURE
COLONIAL AND PREREVOLUTIONARY PERIOD

The first american literature is generally considered certain accounts of discoveries and explorations in the new world that frequently display the largeness of vision and vigor of style characteristic of conteporary Elizabethan writers. Such qualities are evident in the work of Capt. John Smith, the first great figure in American letters. His Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the summer isles (1624) had the enormous vitality of much english prose in the epoch of the King James Bible.

This rich energy diminished as literature, especially in the New England Colonies, became pre-occupied with theology. A religious explanation for every event was eloquently provided. Among the notable works in this vein are History Of Plimmoth plantation (posthumously pub.1856) by William Bardford, an early governor of plymouth colony and The History Of New England by John Winthrop, earliest governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, first published in relatively complete form in 1853. The vast theological work Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), subtitled The Ecclesiastical History of New England From Its First Planting, by the Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather was, in spite of its awkward style and didacticism, a masterpiece of religious scholarship and thought. Cotton Mather was the author of more than 400 printed works, and his father, Increase, also a clergyman, wrote about 100.

A countervoice was that of Thomas Morton (c. 1590-c. 1647), an English adventurer in America, who in The New English Canaan (1637) expounded the point of view of an early rebel against Puritanism.

Modern readers have probably found more of interest in the accounts of Indian wars and of interest in the accounts of Indian wars and of captivities. Notable among the former are narratives such as A Brief History of the Pequot War by the English colonist John Mason (1600?-72), edited in 1736 by te historian Thomas Prince (1687-1758). Among the many published reports about colonists captured by Indians, perhaps the most celebrated is the narrative by Mary Rowlandson (1635?-78?).

Much pious verse was written during the early colonial period. The first book printed in the colonies, in fact, was a hymnal, The Whole Book of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre (1640), better known as The Bay Psalm Book; this was the work of Three New England clergymen, Richard Mather, John Eliot, and Thomas Weld (1595-1661). The most remarkable colonial poets were Anne Bradstreet (The Tenth Muth Lately Sprung in America, 1650); Edward Taylor, whose exceptionally fine Poetical Works was first published in 1939; and the Clegyman Michael Wigglesworth, whose once popular poem The Day of Doom (1662) recounts in ballad meter the end of the world from a firmly Calvinist viewpoint.

The literature of the colonies outside New England was generally of a less theological cast. Present-day readers may still be amused by the wit and satire of A Character of the Province of Maryland (1666) by George Alsop (b. 1638), an indentured servant; and they will be charmed by A Brief Description of New York (1670) by the publicist Daniel Denton (fl. 1670). Other writings of this period may be found in the collection edited by Albert C. Myers, Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, Delaware, and West Jersey, 1630-1708 (1912).

With the 18th century, interest moved to more secular, practical problems. The work of the Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards remains significant, however. Popularly associated with his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741), Edwards is distinguished for his clarity of expression in such metaphysical works as A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737) and Freedom of the Will (1754).
Two names commonly associated with provincial life illustrate the growing secularism of American writing. The first is William Byrd, a plantation owner; his History of the Dividing Line (written 1738, first pub. 1841) has remained a humorous masterpiece, and his even more belatedly published diaries, Secret Diary (1941, and Another Secret Diary (1942), are comparable to the work of his near contemporary, the English diarist Samuel Pepys. The other, greater name is that of Benjamin Franklin, whose masterly unfinished Autobiography has become a classic of world literature. His lettes, satires. “bagatelles,” almanacs, and scientific writings are the the writings of a great citizen of the world.

The earliest known work by a black American writer is “Bar’s Fight, August 28, 1746,” 28 lines of verse by Lucy Terry (1730-1821). Shortly afterward came the poem “An Evening Thought; Salvation by Christ, with Penitential Cries” (1760) by a slave, Jupiter Hammon (1720?-1800). The African-born poet Phillis Wheatley, the servant of a tailor’s wife in Boston before her release from slavery, was the first black American to receive considerable critical acclaim as a writer. Her collection Poems on Various Subjects: Religious and Moral (1773, London) is predominantly religious in tone.

(source: Funk & Wagnalls. New Encyclopedia 2 Ameri, Assin. Page 53-54)


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