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美国文学史》扩充资料第1部分 殖民早期与美国文学的起始 Part I.  Background Reading（阅读要点）: Colonial Beginnings (1600s to 1750) America has always been a land of beginnings.  After Europeans “discovered” America in the fifteenth century, the mysterious New World became for many people a genuine hope of a new life, an escape from poverty and persecution, a chance to start again.  We can say that, as a nation, America begins with that hope.  When, however, does American Literature begin? The story of American literature begins in the early 1600s, long before there were any “Americans”.  American literature begins with American experiences.  Long before the first colonists arrived, before Christopher Columbus, before the North men who “Found” America about the year 1000, Native Americans loved here.  Each tribe’s literature was tuphthy women into the fabric of daily life and reflected the unmistakably American experience of living with the land.  Another kind of experience, one filled with fear and excitement, found its expression in the reports that Co’lumbusd and other explorure sent home in Spanish, French, and English.  In addition, the journals of the people who lived and died in the New England worlderness tell unforgettable tales of hard and sometimes heartbreaking experiences of those early years. Experience, then, is the Key to early American literature.  The New World provided a great variety of experinces, and these experiences demanded a wide variety of expressions by an even wider variety of early American writers.  The earliest writers were Englishmen describing the English exploration and colonization of the New World (America).  These writers included Thomas Hariot, John Smith (1580-1631), William Bradford John Winthrop (1588-1649), Edward Jaylor (1645-1729), Jonathan Edwards (1723-1758), William Byrd (1674-1744), etc.  American Indians, explorers, Dilgrims, Puritan ministers, frontier wives, plantations, owners –they are all the creators of the first American literature. The Puritans       The ship Mayflower carried about one hundred passengers (their leader called them Pilgrims, or travelers) and test sixty0six days to beat its way across the Atlantic.  In December of 1620, the Mayflower put the Pilgrims ashore at Plymouth, Massachusetts.  Before the unrelenting (unmerciful) cold winter was over, half of them were dead.  Within the next few years, however, those who survived were joined by more settlers from England.  Only some of these first colonists were Puritans, but it was the puritans, led by their dergy-men, who dominated the government, the religious outlook, and the literature of the communiters they established.      Who were these extraordinary people?  The Puritans were devout Christians who wanted to purify their lives and their church of what they saw as the corruptions of English society and its state religion, the church of England.  They called themselves saints or separatists, but they are now generally called puritans – a name that became a sign of their separateness.       The puritans believed in an all-powerful God who freely granted to his “saints” the gift of grace.  Grace was a complicated matter for the Puritans, but it can be described as the spirit that would gurarantee salvation – eternal happiness with God.  In their daily lives the puritans wanted to demonstrate at every moment that they possessed grace or that they were worthy of it.       For the Puritans everything was, ideally, aimed at personal salvation and the building of a new, God—centered society.  They were willing to risk their lives for such a world.  It would be a place where they would practice their religion freely and raise their children free from the frivolities (trifle) and temptations of the Old World.  As we listen to their language, which refers to the Bible easily and frequently, their passionate desire to establish a New Jerusalem becomes clear.  In their dreams they would build the city of God on earth.       Life for the averge Puritan in the New World was essentially a life of work and prayer, but it was not a fanatically awstere life.  The Puritans worked long and hard under extremely difficult conditions so that their farms and trading enterprises would prosper.  In fact, they believed prosperity was a sign of election, or God’s special favour.  Nevertheless, they did not turn away from eating and drinking, the pleasure of social gatherings, and the joys of a close family life.  They simply kept reminding themselves that their souls were the constant battlegrounds of God and Satan and that every act and thought had to be judged according to whether or not it truly glorified God.       In the pursuit of virtue, the Puritans passed laws against many activities that would distract good souls from their real task.  Certain “delights” were for bidden, such as bowling, Maypole dancing, gambling, attending plays, and “unprofitable” hunting (for someone who was a bad shot, it was a sin to waste time and ammunition).  Virtue was learned primarily at home, where the father had complete authority.  The family was the center of activity; the aged were always cared for; young people were apprenticed to learn trades the community needed.       Writing was an important part of Puritan life; it was often an extension of relation.  IN fact, the first book published in America was the Bay Psalm Book (1740), a translation of the biblical Psalms.  Many Puritans Kept journals to help them carefully examine their spiritual lives.  These journals and diaries, detailed and intense, were usually meant to be purely prorate writings.  Even when they did write for a public, however, the puritans wrote to instruct others or to testify to their experieme of divine grace; they wrote spiritual autobiographies. Puritan writing, in other words, was practical.  The writers were not merely providing entertainment; they were dieply involved with their spiritual selves and attempts to improve them.  They wrote no fiction, nor did they even approve of reading fiction, and they wrote no plays because they disapproved violently of the theatre.  Their writings consisted largely of journals, sermons, hymns, histories, and poems. Just as Puritans sought to purify their loves, so too they sought to purify their language.  Everything they wrote avoided ornate style, the ‘convoluted, flowery complicated and decorative style of their European contemporaries.  They preferred to write in what they called Plain style, even as they strove for plainness in their architecture, clothing, food, and howsehold furnishings.  Plain style was meant simply to communicates ideas as clearly as possible.  Writing was not a way of showing off cleverness or learning but a way of serving God and the community.  The whole Puritan way of life is summed up in William Bradford’s desire to tell the story of Plymouth plantation in “a plain style, with singular regard write to simple truth in all things.” The Southern Colonies       Life in the southern colonies, begun in 1607 with Jamestown, Virginia, developed quite differently from life in New England.  Unlike the Puritans, who lived fairly closely together, much of the southern population lived on farms or plantations that were distant from one another.  Often like little colonies of their own, these plantation were largely self-sufficient.       The larger estates were owned and operated by wealthy and well-educated colonists who developed a more social and outgoing way of life than the puritans.  Different things became important to them; culturation of nature and of society, sophistication, and public service.       Southern colonial literature reflects that experience.  For the most part, southern gentlemen and ludies carried on coorespondence with friends who often lived at great distances from them, as well as with family and friends back in England.  Many of the southern colonists belonged to the Church of England, the Church that the Puritans had attempted to reform, and their ties with the old World were stronger.  As a result, they did not have the reasons the puritans had to create a literature of their own.  Still, in their letters, journals, and public reports, southern writers recorded the details of their way of life.  In their writings, the realities of science and politics blend with a New World sense of excitement and discovery.  After all, the southern wilderness too had to be explored, mapped, and described.       Of course, not all the residents of the southern colonies were the prosperous owners of plantations.  Most were hardworking trades people, artisans, small farmers, indentured (bound by compact) servants, and slaves.  Yet the sophisticated gentleman and lady dominate our sense of the early southern colonies as we meet them in literature.  We can hear at once, in the voice of a man like William Byrd, a strong contrast between the more worldly and witty southerners and the intense, self-examining Puritans.  This contrast, too, is an important part of the American experveme. Some writers and their writings.       As I’ve said earlier, the earliest writers were English men describing the English exploration and colonization of the New World (America).  Thomas Harriot’s Briefe and True Report of the New-Found Land of Virginia (1588) was only the first of many such works.  Back in England, people planning to more to Virginia or New England would read the books as travel guides.  But this was dangerous because such books often mixed facts with fantasy.  For example, one writer (William Wood) clarimed that he had seen lions in Massachnsetts.  It is probable that these “true reports” had a second kind of reader.  People could certainly read them as tales of adventure and excitement.  Like modern readers of science fiction, they could enjoy imaginary voyages to places they could never visit in reality.       The writings of John Smith probably satisfied readers of both kinds.  A real adventure, he had fought the Turks in ‘Hungary’, where he was wounded and taken prisoner.  He was sold as a slave and escaped by Killing his master.  In 1607 he helped found Jamestown, the first English colony in America.  It was made up of one hundred men and four boys, and the man in charge was the 27 year-old Captain John Smith.       It was at Jamestown that Smith may or may not have had the most famous of his adventures.  Scholars are still not sure to what extent he was embroidering the truth when he claimed to have been captured by chief Powhatan and rescued from death by the chief’s beautiful daughter, Pocahontas.  The story seemed to grow more romantic and exciting each time Smith related it.  Although the details are not always correct, his Tue Relation of Virginia (1608) and Description of New England (1616) are fascinating “advertisement” a kind of 17th-century “commercial, which try to persuade the reader to settle in the New world.  The Puritans, for instance, studied his Description of New England carefully and then decided to settle there in 1620.  On the other hand, the book is an effort to raise money for another new expedition and to convince Englishmen to join Smith in establishing a new colony of which the hoped to be governor.       Smith was often boastful about his own adventures in his books.  His General Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624) contains the story of his rescue by beautiful Pocahontas.  The story is probably untrue, but it is the first famous tale from American literature.  His Elizabethan (of the time of Elizabeth I.  Queen of England 1558-1603) style is not always easy to read, and his punctuation was strange even for the seventeenth century.  Still, he can tell good story: Two great stones were brought before Powhattan: then as many as could dragged him (Smith) to them, and thereon (on the stones) laid him head and being ready with their clubs, to beat out his brains, Pocahontas, the King’s dearest daughter, got his head in her arms, and Laid down her own head upon his to save him from death: whereat (because of that) the King was contented (agreed) he should live. Almost from the beginning, as the English settled along the Atlantic coart of America, there were important 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 plantation owners were slow to develop a literature of their own.  They preferred books imported from England.  But in New England, the Puritans had come to the New world in order to form a society based on strict Christian beliefs.  Like the puritans in England, 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 1636 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.       The most interesting works of New England Puritan Lirterature were histories.  To the Puritans, mistory developed according to “God’s plan”.  In all of their early New England histories, they saw New England as the “Promised land” of the Bible.        Of Phymouth Plantation by William Bradford is the most interesting of the Puritan histories.  In describes the Puritans’ difficult relation with the Indians.  It also describes their difficulties during the first winter, when half of the small colony died.  This is all told in the wonderful “plain style” which the Puritans admired.  In order to present the “clear light of truth” to uneducated readers, Puritan writers avoided elegant language, seldom using any metaphors or decorative language.  The Examples they used were drawn either from the Bible or from the everyday life of farmers and fishermen.  Braford’s plain language reflects his belief that everything in the Puritan way of life should have the power of simplacity.  As one of the great Puritan ministers, John Cotton, said “God’s altar needs no polishing.”  At the same time, Bradford’s history is deeply influenced by the belief that God directs everything that happens.  Each event he writes about begins with, “If pleased God to …”.  Year after Year Bradord always Keeps sight of the signs of God’s judgment and providence.  He sees the signs everywhere, so that, far example, the Indian interpreter Squanto becomes “an instrument sent of God for their good.”  For Bradford the Puritans’ flight from Europe is gurded by God in the same way as the Lsraelites’ exodus from Egypt.  The History of New England by John Winthrop is also in the “splain style”.  But it is far less cheerful.  Winthrop was the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and, like most of the Puritan writers, was a minister all his life.  His writing style is rather cold.  He rarely shows shock or sadness, even when he describes scenes of great unhappiness.  Sometimes, the dryness of his “plain style” is very effective.  This is him description of the New England, coast when he arrived on June 7. 1630:       We had now fair sunshine weather, and so pleasant a sweet air as did much refresh us, and there came a smell off shore like the smell of a garden. Like all of the puritan historians, Winthrop believed that most events could be seen as a sign from God.  For example, when a snake was found and killed in a church, people saw this as the victory of New England religion over Satan.       The first Puritans were not very democratic.  The Wonder-Working Providence of Sion’s Saviour in New England (1650), by Edward Johnson, defends the harsh laws made by the Puritan leader.  Everybody had to obey these church laws.  Believers in other forms of Christianity were called “snakes” or even worse names.  Puritan Society was a “theocracy”: the laws of society and the laws of religion were the same.  Those who broke the laws were punished severly.  In fact, by the beginning of the 1700s, newer puritan ideas were becoming important to the development of democracy.       Even in the early days, some writers were struggling hard against the Puritan theocracy.  Anne Hutchinson (1590-1643) and Roger Williams (1603-1683) both desired a fricer religious environment Rogers, who went off to establish his own colony in Rhode Island, was especially important.  His Bloudy Tenent (1644) 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”.       The New Englanders were quite successful at keeping the absolute “purity” of Puritanism during the early, difficult days of settlement.  But when the Indians were no longer a danger, the dark forests had become farmland, and more comfortable settelements had grown up, puritan strictness began to relax.  The change was very slow and was not easily recognized by New Englanders at the time.  By looking at the early history of the Mather family in New England, we can see how the Puritan tradition grew weaker and weaker.       Richard Mather (1596-1669), the founder of his family in America, was greatly admired as a typical strong Puritan minister.  Another preacher, who knew Richard Mather well, described his way of preaching as “very plain, studiously avoiding obscure terms”. Increase Mather (1639-1723), his son, was a leader of the New England theorcracy until it began to fall apart at the end of the 17th century.  He 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 (the imagined ability panic to work magic of certain women).  In the town of Salem, Massachusetts, young girls and lonely old women were arrested and put on trial as witches.  A number of these people were put to death for “selling their souls” to the devil.  Increase Mather’s best-known book, Remarkable Providences (1684), tells us much about the psychological environment of the time.  The book is filled with the Puritans strange beliefs.  To Mather and other Puritans, witchcraft and other forms of evil were an absolutely real part of everyday life. Increase’s son, Cotton Mather (1663-1728), became the most famous of the family.  He had “an insane genius for advertising himself”.  He wrote more than 450 works.  Whenever something happened to him in his life, Cotton Mather wrote a religious book.  When his first wife died, he published a long sermon (religious address) called Death Made Easy and Happy.  When his little daughter died, he wrote .  The Best Way of Living, which is to Die Daily.  Most of these works were quite short and are of little interest to us today.  But some, such as his famous Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), were very long and were published in many volumes.  He was certain that his longest work, The Angel of Bethesda (writer in 1723), would “prove one of the most useful books that have been published in the World”.  But the book was so long, no one ever tried to publish it.  Cotton’s Diary gives us a clear picture of the inner life of this strange and often unpleasant man.  On almost every page, he speaks of his special relationship with God.  When he had a pair in his stomach or teeth, he thought about how he had broken God’s law with his stomach or teeth. The writings of Cotton Mather show how the later Puritan writers moved away from the “plain style” of their grandfather.  The language is complicated and filled with strange words from Latin.  Although Mather called his style “a cloth of gold”, ordinary people usually found it hard to read.  In the writings of the earliest Puritans, we often find poems on religious themes.  Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) was the first real New England pet.  Anne Bradstreet came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with her husband and her parents in 1630.  The Bradstreets settled in the frontier village of Andover, where Anne, under difficult conditions that tried her faith, maintained a household and raised eight children.  She had to defend her right to compose verses, for many Puritans, who did not disapprove of poetry itself, wondered if a woman should write it.  Yet her first book, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America, was published in England in 1650 and was a great success.  None of her early poems are very good.  Her later poems, written with charming simplicity, show her progress in art.  She refuses “to sing of wars, of captains, and of Kings”.  Instead, she gives us a look into the heart of a 17th century American Woman.  Bradstreet’s finest poems are those closest to her personal experience as a Puritan wife and mother living on the edge of the wilderness. In her tender poem “To My Dear and Loving Husband”, Bradstreet places her earthly married life within the frame work of eternity. If ever two were one, then surely us. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold. Or all the riches that he East doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought (anything) but love from thee, give, recampese. Thy love is such I can no way repay, The heavens reward thee manifold (abundantly), I pray. The while we live, in love let’s so persevere That when we live no more, we may live ever. The poetry of Edward Taylor was unknown to American literary historians until 1939.  Because Taylor considered his poems a private record of his religious experieme, he asked his heirs never to publish them.  As a result, the work of this major New England poet was unknown for 210 years after his death.  Perhaps another reason Taylor did not wish to publish his work was that his poetry was not written in the plain style of the Puritans.       Written during the last years of the Puritan theocracy, it is some of the finest poetry written 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”.  In oen poem, he describes truly religious people.  They are as rare”  As Black swans that in milkuhite Rivers are”.  Sometimes, he sounds quite modern.  In a poem about the making of the universe, he asks, “Who in this Bowling Alley bowled the sun”?       Throghout American history, even in the 20th century, 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 countryf, telling people to “repent and be saved by the New light.”  The sermons of Jonathan Edwards were so powerful-and so frightening – that his church was often filled with screams and crying: “The God that holds you over the fire of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors (hate) you,” he said.  The sermon from which this line is taken, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry god, is still famous for its literary quality.  It remains the most famous literary monument to the Great Awakening.       In fact, Edwards is the first major American writer who was educated and lived his entire life in the New world.  Edwards was an extraordinary child who, at the age of eleven or twelve, wrote scientific essays on insects, colors, and rainbows.  When he was thirtten, he entered Yale, where he experienced a religious conversion.  In 1729 he succeeded his grandfather as minister in Northampton, Massachuses known as the Great Awakening a fervent revival of religious feeling that swept America from New England to the South from about 1734 to 1749.       The Puritans admired science as “the study of God’s material creation”.  Edwards developed this idea further.  He 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.       Although Literature developed far mire slowly in the south than in New England, a few early writers are worth mentioning.  IN Virginia, Robert Beverley (1673-1722) wrote intelligently about nature and society.  His History and Present State of Virginia is written in a plain, clear style, mixing wild numour with scientific observation.  Although he was a strong defender of black slavery, his section on the Indians of Virginia is free of race hatred.  Even more amusing is the History of the Dividing Line by William Byrd.      Here, I’d like to remind you of sth important.  The New England Puritans wrote so much and so vividly that they tend to dominate early American literature.  We should remind ourselves that not all early American settlers were Puritans.  In the southern colonies, especially, other English setters had founded prosperous plantations and communities with a style of life quite unlike that of New England.  William Byrd was one of the most brilliant of the southern landowning aristocracy.  These southern gentry modeled themselves on the English upper classes, taking pride in stately nomes furnished with fine China, paintings, and books.  Though hardworking and religious, they were not afraid of some of the worldly pleasunes that he Puritans shunned.       Byrd was born in Jamestown, which John smith had helped establish 67 years earlier.  When Byrd was only 7 years old, his rich father sent him to England for his education.  Byrd lived in London more than half of his life, enjoying the city’s society and its theatres.  He was 52 before he returned to Virginia.  There he read his Greek and Latin Classics every day; owned the second largest library in America, numbering 3,600 book; entertained and visited his neighbors; and managed his huge 180,000 –acre estate, upon which he founded the city of Richmond.       History of the Dividing Line was written for London audiences.  Byrd used humor and realism to describe life along the dividing line (or frontier) between Virginia’s settled areas and the deep forest.  His opinions about the Indians were surprisingly liberal for the time.  He felt that the English should marry them rather than fight them.  He had a similarly liberal view of blacks:”  We all know that very bright Talents may be lodged under a dark Skin”.  These ideas were certainly not shaved by the majority of Southern plantation owners. The Birth of a Nation (1750-1800) A New Nation       On April 19,1775, a group of American Militiamen (American Militiamen of the revolutionary peviod i.e. ready to march at a minute’s notice) faced British redcoats (English soldiers) across the little bridge outside the village of Concord, Massachu-Suddenly someone – no one knows –fired a musket shot, “the shot heard round the world”, and the American Revolution began.  That shot was the climax of years of frustration, anger, and preparation among the colonists.       During the half-century before the Revolution, the thirteen colonies had begun to prosper and to seem less and less like perilous settlements on the edge of a wilderness.  They had begun to communicate more with one another and to grow aware of their mutual problems and feelings.  They shared their anger over the oppressive political and economic policies of the British government.  No one at that time, however, was thinking of revolution-not yet.       Then came a series of infuriating laws and taxes.  The stamp Act in 1765 required that the colonist buy special stamps for newspapers, licenses, pamphlets, and house British soldiers in their own homes.  The Townshend Acts in 1767 taxed tea, glass, lead, and paper.  When some of the colonial assemblies refused to abide by the new laws, the British government declared those assemblies “dissolved”.  Violence was not far away: The Boston Massacre erupted in 1770 when British troops fired on a taunting mob.  In 1773 the British Parliament insisted again on its right and power to tax Americans.  The tax on tea became a symbol, and the famous Boston Tea Party became a symbol too – a symbol of American resistance – as colonists dressed as Indians dumped a shipment of British tea into Boston Harbor, Americans protested and petitioned King George III for “no taxation without representation.”  They wanted only what was reasonable, they said.  They wanted to share in their own government.  Britain replied with the Intolerable Acts of 1774, designed to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party.  Many more rights that had been granted to the colonists in their charters were revoked.  Them, when Paul Revere spotted the redcoats on their way to seize American arms at Concord, Americans responded with force.       Yet it was not until January 1776 that a widely heard public voice demanded complete separation from England.  The voice was that of Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet Common Sense, with its heated language, increased the growing demand for separation.  It pointed the way toward the Declaration of Independence in July.  If ever writing affected public affairs, Common Sense did.  We will not be surprised to find that most American literature in the eighteenth century was politrial.  Through newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, broadsides, and litters, colonial leaders discussed their ideas of human nature and of government.  They began forging a new sense of national identity.  Battles had to be fought before the thirteen colonies achieved independence.  Nevertheless, for years before the first shot was fired, language was the source of growing American power.  For those Americans it was language that connected reason and revolution.  By the time the Revolutionary War was over in 1783, Americans were well on their way to establishing a literary heritage as extraordinary as their political one. The Age of  Reason       Thomas Jefferson once said that a rational society is one that “informs the mind, sweetens the temper, cheers our spirits, and promotes health.”  Jefferson’s attitude – affirm belief in progress, common sense, and the pursuit of happiness – is typical of the period we now call the Age of Reason.       Some historians say we oversimplify the complex eighteenth century in suggesting it was a time when everyone was “reasonable.”  Of course everyone was not reasonable.  The century was marked by fiery emotion as much as by cool logic.  But it was a time when people believed in the possibilities of reason.  It is that hope, that optimism, that gives the age its character.       Americans at this time were influenced by the European movement called the Enlightenment. Followers of Enlightenment ideas believed that people could discover truth by the light of reason on the darkness of ignorance, superstition, social injustice, and political tyranny – all in a quest to build the perfect society.  Through science and rational government, they thought, order could be established in the world.  Above all, followers of Enlightenment ideas stressed the importance of resisting arbitrary limitations on their own free thoughts.       Enlightened Americans, like Europeans, came to trust in human potential.  They began to rely on the power of their own minds to shape their own destinies, and the power of their own language to express what that destiny should be.  They thought, wrote, and spoke with a greater self-confidence than a young nation had ever done before.  Jefferson once commented that one evening spent at Ben Franklin’s house in Philadelphia in the company of musicians, lawyers, and politicians was worth a whole week in Paris. Writing and Revolution       During the 1779s no one in America could claim to be a professional novelist, poet, or playwright.  Yet a great number of Americans expressed themselves on the subjects of liberty, government, law, reason, and individual and national freedom.  Americans filled pamphlets with anonymous poems on the issues of the day.  They produced a great number of political broadsides – sheets of paper covered with anonymous poems, songs, and essays – that could be tacked up around the city, left on doorsteps, or even read to groups on street corners.  This writing was not sophisticated, but it was the writing of people whose lives were touched by the events of a turbulent time.       The policies of Great Britain helped make writers – even poets – out of many colonials.  An uproar over the Stamp Act of 1765 brought out poems everywhere: in political pamphlets, in newspapers, nailed to trees, slipped under doors.  When British soldiers killed several Boston citizens in 1779, a flurry of broadsides protested the senseless deaths.  The awkward, naïve verses – written by people who were not professional writers – suggest that the pain and shock of the events were intense enough to stir even in nonliterary people the need to express their feelings.       Gradually, negative protests turned into more positive expressions.  Besides petitioning against “taxation without representation,” more and more Americans started calling for more self-government.  Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense sold an extraordinary 100,000 copies in three months.  The Declaration of Independence – the culmination of the writing of this period – carries the voice not of an individual but of a whole people.  It is more than writing of the period, it defined the meaning of the Revolution. Toward a National Literature      Americans of the 18th century produced a great variety of unusual forms of literature: ballads, skits (a light, short piece of satire or burlesque) broadsides, newspaper poems, editorials, essays, private and public letters, satires, pamphlets – written by people of every social class and almost every degree of skill.  The energy of the age did not express itself in the usual forms with great original poetry, fiction, drama, music, or art.  Nevertheless, there were some writers, composers, and painters of note.       It would be some time before America would learn to be itself artistically, but it did make a beginning.  The new nation had the desire to be new in every way possible.  Political independence brought with it a desire for literary and artistic independence.  In 1783 Noah Webster, a literary nationalist, declared: “America must be as independent in literature as she is in politics, as famous for the arts as for arms.”       What would make an American book?  Many writers thought that the new nation possessed at least two unique subjects, two things no European had experience: the natural wilderness and the Revolution.  They believed that the majestic, awe-inspiring landscape provided a setting and even an antagonist that would be the basis of a great literature.  They also believed that the Revolution provided stories of great human experiences and the beginning of an American mythology.       If Columbus “discovered” American, the Patriots such as Franklin, Paine, and Jefferson, in the words of one historian, “invented” it.  That invention of an American self and society, an American identity, was the greatest single imaginative creation of this period.  The writing in this unit can give us some idea of the complexity and excitement of trying to answer the question that was once posed by Jean de Crevecoeur: “What then is the American, the new man”?      Some writers and their writings       The most memorable writing in 18th-century America was done by the Founding Fathers, the men who led the Revolution of 1775-1783, and who wrote the Constitution of 1789.  None of them were wtiters of fiction.  Rather, they were practical philosophers, and their most typical product was the political pamphlet.  They both admired and were active in the European “Age of Reason” or “Enlightenment”.  They shaved the Enlightenment belief that human intelligence (or Reason) could understand both nature and man.  Unlike the Puritans – who saw man as a sinful failure – the Enlightenment thinkers were sure man could improve himself.  They wanted to create a happy society based on justice and freedom.       The writings of Benjamin Franklin (1756-1790) show the Enlightenment spirit in America at its best and most optimistic.  His style is quite modern and, even today, his works are a joy to read.  Although he strongly disagreed with the opinions of the Puritams, his works show a return to thin “plain style”.  At the same time, there is something “anti-literary” about Franklin.  He had no liking for poetry and felt that writing should always have a practical purpose.       We can see these ideas even in his earliest work, the Dogood Papers (1722), written when he was only sixteen.  These are a series of short pieces with are very funny, but full of moral advice (praising honesty and attacking drunkemess, etc.)  His Poor Richard’s almanac (1732-1757) gives similar advice.  Almanacs, containing much useful information or farmers and sailors (about the next year’s weather, sea tides, current events ect.), were a popular form of practical literature.  Together with the Bible and the newspaper, they were the only reading matter in most Colonial households.  Franklin made his Almanul interesting by creating the character “Poor Richard”.  Each new edition continued simple but realistic story about Richard, his wife and family.  He also included many “sayings” about saving money and working heard.  Some of these are known to most Americans today:       God helps them who help themselves.       Fish and Visitor stink after three days.       Rewove of little expenses: a small Leak will sink a great ship.       No gains without pains.       There are no ugly loves, nor handsome prisons.       Lost time is never found again.       Dost thou love life?  Then do not squander.       Time, for-that’s the Stuff life is made of.       To err is human, to repent divine; to persist, devilish. In 1757, Franklin collected together the best of his sayings, making then into an essay called The Way to Wealth.   This little book became one of the best-sellers of the western world and was translated into many languages.        During the first half of his adult life, Franklin worked as a printer of books and newspapers.  But he was an energetic man with wide interests.  As a scientist, he wrote important essays on electricity which were widely read and admired in Europe.  His many inventions, his popularity as a writer and his diplomatic activity in support of the American Revolution made him world-famous in his own lifetime.  At the time of his death, no other American was better known or more respected.  In both the Old World and the New world, Franklin was seen as a representative American: the clever, prodent, self-made man, the thrifty Yankee who works hard, who knows how to take advantage of an opportunity, and who “gets ahead” (succeed).  His energy, curiosity, tact, charm, and practicality brought him many successes in business, literature, science, and government.       Franklin’s life was full; he lived with intersity and imagination.  Even his death, according to his plan, would reflect his feeling for life.  This is the epitaph, or tombstone inscription, he wrote for himself:       The body of B. Franklin, printer; like the cover of an old Book, its contents torn out, and stripped of its Lettering and Gilding, lies here, Food for Worms.  But the World shall not be wholly Lost: For it will, as he believed, appear once more.  In a new and more perfect Edition.  Corrected and amended by the Author.  He was born Jan. 6, 1706.  Died 17----.       Although Franklin wrote a great deal, almost all of his important works are quite short.  He ruvented one type of short prose which called the “hoax”, or the “tall tale” (later made famous by Mark Twain).  A hoax is funny because it is so clearly a lie.  During the Revolution, he developed this form of humor into a powerful propaganda tool for American independence.       Franklin’s only real book was his autobiography.  The first part of the book, begun in 1771, is an entertaining description of his life up to early manhood.  The second part was written in 1784 when Franklin was a tired old man and the style is more serious.  Franklin now realizes the part he has played in American history and writes about himself “for the improvement of others”.  As the autobiography of “the father of the Yankeas”, it is a book of great value.       The period just before the start of the Revolution saw a flood of political journalism.  This was mostly in the form of pamphlets rather than newspapers, because the pamphlet was cheap to publish and the author, if he wished did not have to give his name.  James Otis (1725-1783) was one early propagomdist who used violent language more than reason in his attacks on British-policies.  Other pro-independence writers included John Dickinson (1732-1808) and John Adams (1735-1826).  Adams later became the second President of the United States.  Other pamphlet-writers, like Samual Seabury (1729-1796) and Daniel Leonard (1740-1829), write for the pro-British side.  Most of these men had to escape from the United States after the Revolution.       The greatest pamphlet-writer of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine (1737-1809), was born in England.  While he was growing up in England, he tried life as a corset maker, a grocer, a sailor, a teacher, and a tax collector.  When he was thirty-seven, he met Benjamin Franklin in London and was persuaded to go to America.  Franklin gave Paine the encouragement he desperately needed, as well as a letter of introduction praising him as an “ingenious, worthy young man”.  Franklin’s insight certainly paid off (yielded good vesults).  Within two years Tom Paine became a successful journalists, publishing anonymously the pamphlet Common Sense, the first American cry for complete independence.  Common Sense sold almost a half million copies.  Nothing that had been written in America was so widely read or so influential.  Its clear thinking and exciting language quickly united American feelings against England.  He seemed to express what the readers themselves had been secretly thinking: “There is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.”  Between 1776 and 1783, he issued a series of 16 pamphlets, called The American Crisis, Number.  It appeared the day after the American leader, General Gorge Washington, was defeated in the Battle of Long Island.  His forces were retreating, their morale low.  The American commander had these stirring words read to his men just before they crossed the Delaware fight at Trenton.       Paine was also active in the French Revolution and wrote a famous defense of that relation too The Rights of Man (1791-2).        Only Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the chief author of the Declaration of Independence, was as important a writer for the American cause as Paine.  Jefferson was devoted to the growth of both the American land and the American mind.  This man of many talents cultivated ten thousand acres of land and built a library of ten thousand volumes, the books that were ultimately the beginning of the library of Congress.  He was a philosopher, scientist, farmer, architect, and inventor (He invented a plow that revolutionized farming); he was governor of Virginia, ambassador to France, and third President of the United States.       Thanks to Jefferson’s beautiful style, the most impostant document in the political history of the United States is also a fine work of literature.  Thomas Jefferson wanted John Adams to draft the Declaration of Independence.  “I will not”, said Adams.  “What can be gour reasons”?  Jefferson asked.  Adams replied, “You can write ten times better than I can.” “well,” said Jefferson, “if you are decided, I will do as well as I can.”  Although it was written during a difficult time in the war, the Declaration is surprisingly free from emotional appeals.  It is a clear and logical statement of why America wanted its independence.  The Declaration was revised 86 times before it was finally signed on July 4, 1776.  (The first signer of the Declaration of Independen was John Hancock)       Soon after the war, Jefferson wrote one of the best descriptions of early America: Notes on the State of Virginia.  Although he himself was a Southerner (and owned slaves at one time), he attacked the slavery system, saying that “nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.”       Jefferson was deeply influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment.  He believed that man did not have to depend on God to improve the world, and should use his own wisdom to the improving by himself.  As a typical Enlightenment thinker, Jefferson believed that all humanity is naturally goods.  “Nature has implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct.”  On the other hand, he was afraid that the commercial pressure of city life would destroy this goodness.  Only “those who labor in the earth,” could be the basis of a truly democratic society.  Jefferson saw another threat to American democracy in the thinking of the “Federalists”, who favored a strong central government for the new American repliblic (some Federalists even wanted to make George Washington King!).  The Federalists wanted a form of government and society which would not be easily upset.  Jefferson, however, felt the people should be able to change the form of their society whenever they thought necessary.  He even accepted the idea that a new American revolution might happen someday: “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”       In Revolutionary America, both prose and poetry had a political or “practical” purpose.  Philip Freneau (1752-1832) was perhaps the best pet of his time.  He was also a political journalist, and this deeply influenced his early poetry.  From the beginning, he wrote in the cause of American independence with strong patriotic feeling.  In his poem Pictives of Columbus (1771), he mixed gloomy descriptions of nature with sharp attacks on British tyranny.  During the war, he wrote about American patriots killed in battle: “Wone grieved (freel sorrow) in such a cause to die.”  He himself fought on an American ship and was captured by the British.  He writes about this experence  in his British Prison Slip (1781).       Hunger and thirst to work our woe combine,       And mouldy bread, and flesl of rotten swine.  After the wov, he wrots poetry supporting Jefferson against the Federalists.  In his last and best phase, he turned to poetry about nature.  In The Wild Honey Suckle (1786), this flower becomes a symble for unnoticed beauty whichquickly passes away.  The last lines of the poem compare the shortness of human life to that of the flower.        For when you die you are the same,       The space between, is but an hour,       The frail duration (easily destroyed life) of flower. But Freneau, “death is no more than unccasing change.” The “Connecticut Wits” were rather more conservative in both their style and politics.  They were America’s very first poetic “circle”.  Although they were strong supporters of the American side in the Revolution, they hated the democratic philosophy of Paine and Jefferson.  Most of them were Federalists in their politics and Calvinists in their religion.  The there major Connecticult Wits were John Trumbull, Timothy Dwight, and Joel Barlow.  The development of the new American personality can also be seen in the writings of J. Hector sti John De Crevecoeur (1735-1813).  Some might object that he was not really an American and that several of his important works were written in French, rather than English.  This is true, but it is also true that for most of his adult life he considered himself an American.  He was born a French aristocrat and went to America in 1755.  In 1769, he settled down as a farmer in New York State.  There he began writing his Letters from an American Farmer, published in London in 1782.  The book contains one of the earliest explanations of the American personality and one still widely read.       Crevecoeur did not describe America as a utopia, nor did he expect it to become one.  Yet he saw far more hope and health in a society where “individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men” than in the older, closed societies of Europe.  At the same time, he was afraid that this happiness would be destroyed by the Revolution.  In his Sketches of Eighteenth Century America (not published until 1925), he explains these fears.  In the must important and interesting part of Sketches, Creveoeur describes the tragedy of people who have been destroyed by the lawlessness of the Revolution.  Nieghbors, who were once friends, burned each other’s houses and killed each other’s families.  To Crevecoeur, the ideal American was quite different: a social man who co-operatory with his neighbors, while earning his own living from farming.  His idealized vision of a “new man” living in a land of boundless opportunities, free from the restraints and class structure of Europe, was extremely influential in shaping the Old world’s image of America.