Colonial Period Unit

Native American and Colonial Period/Puritans Unit

American Literature 112 A

Native Americans - first peoples of North America (some 12,000 – 70,000 years before Columbus)

Colonial Period (1607-1750)

How are the beliefs, attitudes, and goals of the Native Americans, Puritans, Southern Planters, and colonists reflected in their literature?

Literary Terms Selections

origin myth
oral tradition
myth/legend / Native American Selections: Read One
“The Earth on Turtle’s Back” p. 20
“When Grizzlies Walked Upright” p. 24
from “The Navajo Origin Legend” p. 27
Puritan Plain Style
ornate
journal / from Of PlymouthPlantation, William Bradford
p. 58
inversion metaphor
lyric poetry iambic
irony rhyming couplet
hyperbole / “Upon the Burning of Our House” (handout)
“To My Dear and Loving Husband” p. 102
Anne Bradstreet
conceit metaphysical poetry
huswifery apostrophe / “Huswifery,” Edward Taylor p. 100
sermon metaphor
simile imagery / from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,
Jonathan Edwards p. 108

Background Information on Native American and Colonial Period pp. 2-13

Author Information

Critical Readings

Test Date ______

One-Pager: Native American traditional stories

Read: Choose a selection from below (just one required)

• “The Earth on Turtle’s Back” p. 20
• “When Grizzlies Walked Upright” p. 24
• “The Navajo Origin Legend” p. 27

Directions: Divide your paper into four sections. Follow the instructions for each quadrant. The written portions must be in ink or typed. The final product should be neat and reflect time and effort.

A visual image, symbol, or representation of an idea/concept that is especially important to you from the reading. Use color to further your symbolic meanings; markers, crayons, colored pencils are all good choices; or you may find photographs, magazine clippings, or other sources that will increase the visual impact of your work. / Write TWO quotes from the text, selected for whatever purpose you like. They may show important ideas, ideas that you question, or issues that have a clear relationship. Be sure to use quotation marks and indicate from where you took the quote (parenthetical documentation). Then explain the significanceof each quote. Do not explain the meaning of the quote (a summary) except as perhaps a lead-in to the significance. Tell why the quote is important (your analysis).
Draw at least one conclusion on the cares, concerns, lifestyle, beliefs, etc., of the society represented in the passage. Support your conclusion with examples from the text. / Two Connections: Write two statements which link parts of the reading to other sources (books, movies, songs, etc.) you are familiar with, or they might tell about your own experience as it connects with these ideas.

Of Plymouth Plantation—Passage for Observation and Prediction

In sundry of these storms the ______were so fierce, and the seas ______

high, as they could not ______a knot of sail, but were ______to hull, for diverse

days together. ______in one of them, as they ______lay at hull, in a mighty

______, a lusty young man (called John Howland) ______upon some

occasion above the gratings, ______, with a seele of the ship ______

into [the sea]; but it pleased God that he ______hold of the topsail halyards, which

______overboard, and ran out at length; ______he held his hold (though he

______his hold (though he was sundry ______under water) till he was

held ______by the same rope to the ______of the water, . . .

hull-drift with the wind

lusty-strong, hearty

seele-rolling; pitching to one side

halyards-ropes for raising or lowering sails

sundry-various

OF PLYMOUTHPLANTATION by William Bradford (p. 59)

1.Define Puritan Plain Style.

2.What problem occurred after the Mayflower went through a fierce storm?

How was this problem repaired?

3.Why was the ship forced to “hull”?

4.What happened to John Howland?

5.Where did the ship intend to land?

Where did the ship actually land?

6.How many of the company were left by February?

7.List three causes of the deaths of half of the company.

a.

b.

c.

8.Why does Bradford praise Myles Standish and William Brewster?

9.To what or whom does Bradford credit the good health of Standish and Brewster?

10.Summarize the beer episode.

11.What is the difference in character between the sailors and the Puritans?

12.What are the conditions of the peace treaty?

13.Does the treaty favor the Pilgrims, the Indians, or is it fair to both sides?

14.Describe and tell how each helps the colonists.

Samoset

Squanto

Massasoit

“Huswifery” Commentary

“Huswifery” develops out of an intricate comparison between cloth making and God’s granting of grace. Such an extended comparison between two startlingly different things—a lowly household task and salvation—is a type of metaphor called a conceit.

Conceits are associated mostly with the writing of seventeenth-century English poets such as John Donne and George Herbert. They introduced into their poetry many images that are not usually considered poetic. For example, Donne compared the union of a man and a woman to a flea that, having bitten them both, unites their blood within itself. Herbert compared the relationship between humanity and God to that between a tenant and a rich lord. Part of the pleasure in reading such poems lies in recognizing the surprising, yet meaningful, way in which the poet has worked out an involved comparison between things that at first seem to have nothing in common.

In religious poetry a conceit may serve a deeper purpose than surprise. It can emphasize the underlying unity among all things in God’s creation—high and low, familiar and strange. As a Puritan, Taylor believed that the miracle of grace consisted in mighty God consenting to join with lowly human beings. Thus, it was natural for him to compare the granting of grace to a housewife making homespun clothes.

“Huswifery” is a kind of prayer in which the poet asks God for grace. The conceit begins in the first stanza, as the poet compares himself to a spinning wheel. The “Holy Word” (the Bible) is like the distaff—a stick on which raw wool is placed before spinning. The basic meaning of this complex comparison is that one cannot receive grace without having some knowledge of Scripture. The poet’s emotions are like the “Flyers” that twist and carry the raw wool; his soul is like the spool that gathers the thread from the wheel; his conversation or social behavior, is like the reel to which the finished thread is transferred from the spinning wheel.

The second stanza compares the poet to a loom, on which the thread or yarn is turned into cloth. God appears now as a weaver meshing the threads into cloth (“the Web”). Once the cloth is woven, it is to be cleansed by such sacraments or ordinances as communion (the Fulling Mills”), dyed, and decorated. In the last stanza Taylor asks that the colorful material be fashioned into beautiful robes to clothe his thoughts, feelings, and behavior. If God will thus glorify the poet, say the final lines of the poem, the poet will then be able to glorify God through the beauty of his being.

In his imaginative conceit, Taylor expresses a key Puritan belief. Grace is a miraculous transformation of oneself from coarse imperfections to shining purity, a transformation as total and dramatic as turning fuzzy wool into majestic robes.

Source: Adventures in American Literature, Heritage Edition Revised. Orlando: Harcourt, 1985.

33. Print.

Poetry Analysis – TP - FASTT

from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards (p. 108)

By the time Jonathan Edwards reached adulthood, Puritanism as an institutionalized religion was collapsing. It was this declining church that Edwards sought to revive in the 1730’s during the Great Awakening. He returned to the strict Puritanism of a century before. He refused to admit to communion people who had not experienced grace. His conservatism brought him into conflict with the members of the congregation and led to his dismissal as pastor.

1. Edwards compares God’s wrath or anger to several things. Cite at least three comparisons.

A.

B.

C.

2. How does Edwards use fear to make “sinners” understand the precariousness of their situation?

3. In this sermon Edwards speaks of an angry God. Are there any references to a merciful God?

Explain.

4. Edwards uses many techniques of persuasion to convince his audience to dedicate their lives to

God. List examples of the following techniques.

A. repetition

B. concrete images

C. alliteration

5. Edwards’s sermon caused some members of the audience to shriek, moan, cry out, and faint.

Why do you think this sermon had such a profound effect?

Upon the Burning of Our House - July 10th, 1666

by Anne Bradstreet
(1612-1672)

In silent night when rest I took,
For sorrow near I did not look,
I waken'd was with thund'ring noise
And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.
That fearful sound of "Fire!" and "Fire!" 5
Let no man know is my desire.
I starting up, the light did spy,
And to my God my heart did cry
To strengthen me in my distress
And not to leave me succourless. 10
Then coming out, behold a space
The flame consume my dwelling place.
And when I could no longer look,
I blest His name that gave and took,
That laid my goods now in the dust. 15
Yea, so it was, and so 'twas just.
It was His own; it was not mine.
Far be it that I should repine,
He might of all justly bereft
But yet sufficient for us left. 20
When by the ruins oft I past
My sorrowing eyes aside did cast
And here and there the places spy
Where oft I sat and long did lie.
Here stood that trunk, and there that chest,

There lay that store I counted best,
My pleasant things in ashes lie
And them behold no more shall I.
Under the roof no guest shall sit,
Nor at thy table eat a bit. 30
No pleasant talk shall 'ere be told
Nor things recounted done of old.
No candle 'ere shall shine in thee,
Nor bridegroom's voice ere heard shall be.
In silence ever shalt thou lie. 35
Adieu, Adieu, all's vanity.
Then straight I 'gin my heart to chide:
And did thy wealth on earth abide,
Didst fix thy hope on mould’ring dust,
The arm of flesh didst make thy trust? 40
Raise up thy thoughts above the sky
That dunghill mists away may fly.
Thou hast a house on high erect
Fram'd by that mighty Architect,
With glory richly furnished 45
Stands permanent, though this be fled.
It's purchased and paid for too
By Him who hath enough to do.
A price so vast as is unknown,
Yet by his gift is made thine own. 50
There's wealth enough; I need no more.
Farewell, my pelf; farewell, my store.
The world no longer let me love;
My hope and treasure lies above.

10-succourless-without comfort

36-Adieu-French for “goodbye”

37-chide-to scold

52-pelf-contemptuous term for wealth