2024年4月21日发(作者：)

Chapter 1:Literature of Colonial America

Most critics hold that American literature per se did not begin until the 19

th

century.

Native American Literature:

three stages:traditional(oral literature),transitional(translations and memoirs)

and modern

Literature of Colonial Settlements

The first American literature was neither American nor really literature.

Puritanism:

The first settlers came to America out of various were called

“Puritans,” so named after those who wished to “purify” the religious practice

in the soon established their own religious and moral principles

known as Amercian Puritanism which became one of the enduring influences in

American thought and American literature,American Puritanism stressed

predestination,original sin,total depravity and limited atonement from God’s

such doctrines in their minds,Puritans left Europe for America in order

to prove that they were God’s chosen people who would enjoy God’s blessings

on earth and in felt that they were exiles under the special grace of

God to establish a theocracy in the New the years in the new

homeland they built a way of life that stressed hard work,thrift,piety,and sobriety.

Literature of the New England Settlements is mainly a literary expression of

the Puritan is based on the Biblical myth of the Garden of

pious and self-disciplined Puritans worked with courage and hope toward building

a new Garden of Eden in looked even the worst of ife in the face with

a tremendous amount of Puritan optimsim has exerted enormous

impact on Amercian literature.

Generally speaking ,there are following types of writing that were produced in

the colonial settlements : histories, travel accounts, biographies, diaries, letters,

autobiographies, sermons, and poems. Sermon was a very popular form of

literature in the 17

th

century Amercia.

All of the works writtern during this period are utilitarian,polemical,or

ns’ metaphorical mode of perception helped to develop literary

symbolism as they saw the physical world a symbol of symbolism as a

technique was a common practice in Puritans placed unusual stress

upon plainness in writing because they were unusually interested in influencing

the simple-minded g the direct influence of the Christian Biblical

poetics,the Puriatn writings are flesh,simple,direct,and with a touch of it

faithfully imitated and transplanted European forms to the new experience,early

American literature was as much a product of continuities as an indigenous

creation.