Chapter 1 Colonial Period

I. Background: Puritanism

1. features of Puritanism

(1) Predestination: God decided everything before things occurred.

(2) Original sin: Human beings were born to be evil, and this original sin can be passed down from generation to generation.

(3) Total depravity

(4) Limited atonement: Only the “elect” can be saved.

2. Influence

(1) A group of good qualities – hard work, thrift, piety, sobriety (serious and thoughtful) influenced American literature.

(2) It led to the everlasting myth. All literature is based on a myth – garden of Eden.

(3) Symbolism: the American puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly American.

(4) With regard to their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of the Bible.

II. Overview of the literature

1. types of writing

diaries, histories, journals, letters, travel books, autobiographies/biographies, sermons

2. writers of colonial period

(1) Anne Bradstreet

(2) Edward Taylor

(3) Roger Williams

(4) John Woolman

(5) Thomas Paine

(6) Philip Freneau

III. Jonathan Edwards

1. life

2. works

(1) The Freedom of the Will

(2) The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended

(3) The Nature of True Virtue

3. ideas – pioneer of transcendentalism

(1) The spirit of revivalism

(2) Regeneration of man

(3) God’s presence

(4) Puritan idealism

IV. Benjamin Franklin

1. life

2. works

(1) Poor Richard’s Almanac

(2) Autobiography

3. contribution

(1) He helped found the Pennsylvania Hospital and the American Philosophical Society.

(2) He was called “the new Prometheus who had stolen fire (electricity in this case) from heaven”.

(3) Everything seems to meet in this one man – “Jack of all trades”. Herman Melville thus described him “master of each and mastered by none”.