Early American Literature: Colonial Beginnings to the Great Awakening
Colonial Beginnings
The story of American literature begins in the early 1600s. The earliest writers were Englishmen describing the English explorations and colonization of the New World.
Thomas Hariot’s A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia is the first of many such works.
Back in England, people planning to move to Virginia or New England would read the books as travel information. But the books often mixed facts with fantasy. People could certainly read them as tales of adventure and excitement.
The writings of Captain John Smith probably satisfied readers of both kinds. He was a real adventurer. In 1607, he helped found Jamestown, the first English colony in America. A True Relation of Virginia and A Description of New England are fascinating “advertisements” that try to persuade the reader to settle in the New World.
Smith was often boastful about his own adventures in his book. His The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles is probably untrue, but it is the first famous tale from American literature. His Elizabethan style is not always easy to read, and his punctuation was strange even for the 17th century.
Almost from the beginning, there were a few differences between the Southern and the New England colonies. In the South, enormous farms or “plantations” used the labor of black slaves to grow tobacco. The rich and powerful owners were slow to develop a literature of their own. They preferred books imported from England. But in New England, the Puritan settlers had come to the New World in order to form a society based on strict Christian beliefs. They believed that society should be based on the laws of God. Therefore, they had a far stronger sense of unity and of a “shared purpose.” This was one of the reasons why culture and literature developed much faster than in the South.
Harvard, the first college in the colonies, was founded near Boston in order to train new Puritan ministers. The first printing press in America was started there in 1638, and America’s first newspaper began in Boston in 1704.
New England Histories and Puritan Beliefs
The most interesting works of New England literature were histories. In all of their early New England histories, they saw New England as the “Promised Land” of the Bible. The central drama of history was the struggle between Christ and Satan.
Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford is the most interesting of the Puritan histories. It describes the Puritans’ difficult relations with the Indians. This is all told in the wonderful “plain style” which the Puritans admired. Puritan writers avoided elegant language. At the same time, Bradford’s history is deeply influenced by the belief that God directs everything that happens.
The History of New England by John Winthrop is also in plain style, but it is far less cheerful. He was the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. His writing style is rather cold. Like all of the Puritan historians, Winthrop believed that most events could be seen as a sign from God.
The first Puritans were not very democratic. The Wonder-Working Providence of Sion’s Saviour in New England by Edward Johnson defends the harsh laws made by the Puritan leaders.
Puritan society was a “theocracy”: the laws of society and the laws of religion were the same. A Survey of the Sum of Church-Discipline by Thomas Hooker is the most famous statement of the Puritan laws. Less severe was John Cotton’s The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England.
Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams both desired a freer religious environment. Roger, who went off to establish his own colony in Rhode Island, wrote The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, which became a famous statement of the case for religious freedom. To him, freedom was not only “good in itself,” it was a necessary condition for “the growth and development of the soul.”
But when the Indians were no longer a danger, the dark forests had become farmland, and more comfortable settlements had grown up, Puritan strictness began to relax. The change was very slow and was not easily recognized by New Englanders at the time.
The Mathers and the Salem Witch Trials
Richard Mather was greatly admired as a typical strong Puritan minister. His way of preaching was “very plain, studiously avoiding obscure terms.” Increase Mather, his son, was a leader of the New England theocracy and was also a minister at North Church in Boston, the most powerful church in New England. The 1690s was the time of the great witchcraft panic. In the town of Salem, Massachusetts, young girls and lonely old women were arrested and put on trial as witches for “selling their souls” to the devil. Increase Mather’s best-known book, Remarkable Providences, tells much about the psychological environment of the time.
Increase’s son, Cotton Mather, became the most famous of his family. He had “an insane genius for advertising himself.” He wrote more than 450 works. When his first wife died, he published a long sermon called Death Made Easy and Happy. When his little daughter died, he wrote The Best Way of Living, Which is to Die Daily. He also wrote Magnalia Christi Americana, in which we can find the description of the Salem witch trials. He admitted that the witch trials had been a mistake and that it was good that they were finally stopped. The writings of Cotton Mather show how the later Puritan writers moved away from the “plain style” of their grandfathers. The language is complicated and filled with strange words from Latin. Although Mather called his style ‘a cloth of gold‘, ordinary people found it difficult to read.
Early American Poetry
In the writings of the earliest Puritans, we often find poems on religious themes. Anne Bradstreet was the first real New England poet. Her The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America contained the first New World poems published in England. She gives us a look into the heart of a 17th-century American woman.
The poetry of Michael Wigglesworth is meant to frighten readers with a picture of the day when the Puritan God will judge mankind. The sound is often ugly, but the images are powerful.
Edward Taylor, a writer from the last years of the Puritan theocracy, wrote some of the finest poetry in colonial America. Like Cotton Mather, Taylor hoped for a “rebirth” of the “Puritan way.” Mather wanted stronger leaders for society. Taylor, however, was concerned with the inner spiritual life of Puritan believers. He created rich, unusual images to help his reader “see, hear, taste, and feel religious doctrine.” Sometimes, he sounds quite modern.
The Great Awakening and Beyond
Throughout American history, there have been many sudden explosions of religious emotion. One of the most famous, called the “Great Awakening,” began about 1730. Preachers like George Whitfield toured the country, telling people to “repent and be saved by the new light.” The sermons of Jonathan Edwards were very powerful and frightening.
The Puritans admired science as “the study of God’s material creation.” Edwards said that there was a close relation between knowledge of the physical world and knowledge of the spiritual world. This idea created a bridge between the old strict Puritan society and the new, freer culture which came later, with its scientific study of the world.
There are a few early writers from the South. Robert Beverley wrote intelligently about nature and society. His The History and Present State of Virginia is written in a plain, clear style, mixing wild humor with scientific observation.
Even more amusing is The History of the Dividing Line by William Byrd. Byrd used humor and realism to describe life along the dividing line between Virginia’s settled areas and the deep forest. His opinions about the Indians were surprisingly liberal for the time. He had a similarly liberal view of blacks. These ideas were certainly not shared by the majority of Southern plantation owners.