Time to kick off the string. I would like to focus on my usual scattered list of themes.
Being a non-early Americanist, I view the Puritans as a means to an end. That is, I look in them for the seeds of themes that become extremely important later on. Such themes include the individual vs. the collective (for them, in religion; for others, in government)/private vs. public, the middle passage and the parallel between body and soul, etc.
Their highly metaphorical language is focused on sight -- a series of images. In Edwards, it's a lot of hellfire; in Bradstreet, it's a lot of everyday or domestic images. Rowlandson, too, keeps saying "mine eyes saw." Seeing is believing, apparently, especially compared to the false "miracles" of the Catholics (see Bradstreet, To my dear children). Hearing can be important, of course, especially since one hears preachers. At the same time, I attribute the focus on sight to ease of metaphor and to the dangers of "hearing" God. She's not on here, but of course, Anne Hutchinson is the prime example of someone who should have kept to seeing. Edwards, when he "sees" Christ in the Personal Narrative, notably does not speak with him.
Seeing also means reading. And writing. To the best of one's poor ability, like Bradstreet's extreme humility, or to improve one's self, as all read the Bible. However, the power of the word is limited -- Edwards' emphasis on experiential belief shows that the word is not always enough. Scripture may fail people, either through their weakness, or in Rowlandson, when God punishes them by taking away the power of Scripture to comfort.
Seeing also means appearance and deception. The idea of seeing as believing comes into play with our favorite folks, the not yet vanished Indians. Rowlandson harps on this theme continually, with the Indians who are dressed as Englishmen, or who she sees under the guise of "Praying" or "Friendly" Indians. (also of interest here are the tons of different words Rowlandson uses to describe the Indians)
I also want to put in a note on worldliness vs. religion. Edwards' Personal Narrative mentions how earthly concerns distracted him from religion, for example at Yale. Similarly, Rowlandson gets happily interested in telling us the details of her economic exchanges with the Indians and forgets to talk about God -- most of her religious references are with respect to the removes, taking us back to the theme of the middle passage and bodily/spiritual movement. Bradstreet, also, notably uses "nature" and classical references in her happy poems (such as the Letters to Her Husband), but remembers to appeal to God at times of death and house fires. (I hope your folks wrote a poem last summer, Brent.) It's fascinating to see the conflict get played out even in exemplary texts. Taylor's extreme emphasis on jewels as metaphor is an attempt to blend the two, and of course, also comes from Biblical metaphors like the ones in the Songs.
Last note: individual experience of religion (Edwards, Rowlandson, Bradstreet's personal conflicts) vs. the collective meeting-house, Great Awakening, etc. It's interesting that Edwards fell from power when he sought to collapse the two by publicly calling out people's private religious status.
No, this is the last note: Winthrop's gentle idealism about overcoming diversity of wealth will resonate through America's attempts to overcome diversity of many different kinds...
I've been thinking a lot about what Heidi said in terms of the importance of visuality in this early American stuff. We see a similar thing going on in the rapidity with which American poets took up French imagism in the early 20th C. I think there's something very different in the authenticating drive of Smith, Edwards, and company. My Norton Anthology (graciously leant to me by Melvin) reminds me that Edwards was profoundly taken by Locke, leading me to think that the visual focus is one aspect of Enlightenment empiricism the Puritans brought with them from England. We see it in Smith's vigorous efforts to assert the truth of his experience, and even more so in Rowlandson's immensely popular memoir. Winthrop tests Biblical exhortations to generosity by the demands the New World will place on its soon-to-be residents, finally reconciling scripture with experience. Edwards, anticipating Emerson, finds evidence of God's plan in nature, although this becomes in his sermon a rotten rind over the fires of hell.
Speaking of Edwards, I've been thinking as well about Heidi's comment that he feel from grace when he tried to collapse private and public realms by calling out backsliders from his congregation. In his sermon he does something similar when he points out to his Westfieldians that the people of Suffield are all flocking to God. While this is not calling out individuals, it does reduce the public realm and turns the Great Awakening into a measurable competitive event. What town can save the most souls in the shortest period of time?
A few more specific observations:
Despite Smith's questionable relations with Native Americans (using his guide as a shield?!?), he simultaneously has a pseudo-teleopoietic understanding of them as well. He believes he is being fattened to be eaten, yet recognizes that "we were to them antipodes," effectively reversing the dominant trope regarding the savage other.
Winthrop does an interesting balancing act between a justification of nascent capitalism and an exhortation to spread the wealth. Does this religious text provide the impetus for American economics?
I find Anne Bradstreet an endlessly fascinating if not particularly good poet. Some of her tropes get over-stretched, but I think really interesting things start to happen at those points. In her letter to her husband, she tests the orthodox definition of marriage with the empirical reality of her separation from her husband. Her conclusion simply re-employs the initial definition, but is undercut because it is still part of the construction that begins with "I wish." What the poem says is orthodox Christianity, but what it does is something very different.
Taylor is a bit behind the times with his metaphysical verse, but his "Preface" from God's Determinations uses sacred and profane definitions of "all" and "nothing" to question the stable meaning of both.
Finally, a question for the both of you: should I be doing more meta-analysis? Is close reading a waste of time given the quantity we must read? Is it best to have a specific sense of a few things these authors have written, or a more general sense of what they "stand for"?
This is just a general comment - you guys know that this web-log isn't for a grade, right? 'The Teacher' isn't going to look at it - while the fourteen page long posts are super-dope, you know you should all feel free to post at any time - short, long, a sentence, a question - in the middle of reading you might have an idea that you could post. Just a suggestion; might make things seem less ponderous.
Hey Brent, I think you should post whatever you want -- close-reading, meta, etc. I'm using this to deposit my thoughts. Think of it as a garbage dump... or something more aesthetic.
Damn Locke. Do you have any thoughts on how Edwards stems out of Locke? I notice a little prefiguration of Hobbes in Winthrop, with the idea of "natural law" being very different (kill your enemy) from the law of grace "love thine enemies").
The difference between Winthrop and Hobbes...I guess it's in their assumptions regarding rational actors. Hobbes assumes people will do what is in their best interests as to remaining alive, while Winthrop expects what seems at times to be the opposite.
Locke and Edwards is a tricky one, and one I'm not sure about. I'd love to hear what Melvin has to say on this one. Locke's concept of the accumulation of experience on the tabula rasa is something like Edwards' idea about the accumulation of sin...but I'm not sure how far this idea can go. My idea in the posting was as simple as thinking about Locke as an empiricist in the broadest sense. Edwards takes scripture fairly literally in positing the number of souls in hell; if one thinks rationally, most people have probably not followed every Biblical precept, and are therefore burning away. You know, in some ways it seems a bit like Hobbes' justifying the divine right of kings. Someone help.
Gender! I like it. I assume that there are some educational/occupational problems here... if you're bearing a million kids and cleaning the house, you don't have so much time to sit over your books and ponder theology... if you were educated to, which is questionable certainly for Rowlandson, and Bradstreet was well-educated, but perhaps not to that level.
Edwards and Winthrop come out of different phases of Puritanism -- Edwards comes of a revivalist wave that is not as concerned with covenanting and more concerned with the absolute decree of God. (This refers to the theological covenant, not the societal translation of covenant.)
Forgot to ask-- Brent, if Taylor is metaphysical and behind the times (to me metaphysical = Donne, tell me if I'm wrong), who or what exactly would be au courant at this moment? Recall my great poetic ignorance.
Taylor's era would be late Milton, early sensibility stuff (correct me if I'm wrong, Melvin). Dryden, certainly. Based on the few discussion I have had with Prof. Lipking, you frequently find this kind of thing in early American poetry -- their poetic models don't show up in printed form in the colonies for quite a while. (This also has to do with a problem Lipking had with Moon's presentation -- that Moon ignored an edition of Ovid that had been popular in England a good half-century prior to Wheatley's writing.) This kind of delay-time is also one reason why I want to do that 18th C. poetry class with Lipking. Establishing context is really tough with the scarcity of actual texts. So I didn't mean to say that Taylor was somehow deficient in following an older model; he probably didn't have any choice. That was more of an off-handed comment, but it's something I'm interested in exploring in more detail later on.
Edward Taylor (1642-1729) would've been about our age during the Restoration - so he's roughly a contemporary of Milton and Dryden. Dryden died in 1700. Paradise Lost was published 1667. Donne, of course, died in 1650.
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Time to kick off the string. I would like to focus on my usual scattered list of themes.
Being a non-early Americanist, I view the Puritans as a means to an end. That is, I look in them for the seeds of themes that become extremely important later on. Such themes include the individual vs. the collective (for them, in religion; for others, in government)/private vs. public, the middle passage and the parallel between body and soul, etc.
Their highly metaphorical language is focused on sight -- a series of images. In Edwards, it's a lot of hellfire; in Bradstreet, it's a lot of everyday or domestic images. Rowlandson, too, keeps saying "mine eyes saw." Seeing is believing, apparently, especially compared to the false "miracles" of the Catholics (see Bradstreet, To my dear children). Hearing can be important, of course, especially since one hears preachers. At the same time, I attribute the focus on sight to ease of metaphor and to the dangers of "hearing" God. She's not on here, but of course, Anne Hutchinson is the prime example of someone who should have kept to seeing. Edwards, when he "sees" Christ in the Personal Narrative, notably does not speak with him.
Seeing also means reading. And writing. To the best of one's poor ability, like Bradstreet's extreme humility, or to improve one's self, as all read the Bible. However, the power of the word is limited -- Edwards' emphasis on experiential belief shows that the word is not always enough. Scripture may fail people, either through their weakness, or in Rowlandson, when God punishes them by taking away the power of Scripture to comfort.
Seeing also means appearance and deception. The idea of seeing as believing comes into play with our favorite folks, the not yet vanished Indians. Rowlandson harps on this theme continually, with the Indians who are dressed as Englishmen, or who she sees under the guise of "Praying" or "Friendly" Indians. (also of interest here are the tons of different words Rowlandson uses to describe the Indians)
I also want to put in a note on worldliness vs. religion. Edwards' Personal Narrative mentions how earthly concerns distracted him from religion, for example at Yale. Similarly, Rowlandson gets happily interested in telling us the details of her economic exchanges with the Indians and forgets to talk about God -- most of her religious references are with respect to the removes, taking us back to the theme of the middle passage and bodily/spiritual movement. Bradstreet, also, notably uses "nature" and classical references in her happy poems (such as the Letters to Her Husband), but remembers to appeal to God at times of death and house fires. (I hope your folks wrote a poem last summer, Brent.) It's fascinating to see the conflict get played out even in exemplary texts. Taylor's extreme emphasis on jewels as metaphor is an attempt to blend the two, and of course, also comes from Biblical metaphors like the ones in the Songs.
Last note: individual experience of religion (Edwards, Rowlandson, Bradstreet's personal conflicts) vs. the collective meeting-house, Great Awakening, etc. It's interesting that Edwards fell from power when he sought to collapse the two by publicly calling out people's private religious status.
No, this is the last note: Winthrop's gentle idealism about overcoming diversity of wealth will resonate through America's attempts to overcome diversity of many different kinds...
That's all for now. Next week's a long week!
I've been thinking a lot about what Heidi said in terms of the importance of visuality in this early American stuff. We see a similar thing going on in the rapidity with which American poets took up French imagism in the early 20th C. I think there's something very different in the authenticating drive of Smith, Edwards, and company. My Norton Anthology (graciously leant to me by Melvin) reminds me that Edwards was profoundly taken by Locke, leading me to think that the visual focus is one aspect of Enlightenment empiricism the Puritans brought with them from England. We see it in Smith's vigorous efforts to assert the truth of his experience, and even more so in Rowlandson's immensely popular memoir. Winthrop tests Biblical exhortations to generosity by the demands the New World will place on its soon-to-be residents, finally reconciling scripture with experience. Edwards, anticipating Emerson, finds evidence of God's plan in nature, although this becomes in his sermon a rotten rind over the fires of hell.
Speaking of Edwards, I've been thinking as well about Heidi's comment that he feel from grace when he tried to collapse private and public realms by calling out backsliders from his congregation. In his sermon he does something similar when he points out to his Westfieldians that the people of Suffield are all flocking to God. While this is not calling out individuals, it does reduce the public realm and turns the Great Awakening into a measurable competitive event. What town can save the most souls in the shortest period of time?
A few more specific observations:
Despite Smith's questionable relations with Native Americans (using his guide as a shield?!?), he simultaneously has a pseudo-teleopoietic understanding of them as well. He believes he is being fattened to be eaten, yet recognizes that "we were to them antipodes," effectively reversing the dominant trope regarding the savage other.
Winthrop does an interesting balancing act between a justification of nascent capitalism and an exhortation to spread the wealth. Does this religious text provide the impetus for American economics?
I find Anne Bradstreet an endlessly fascinating if not particularly good poet. Some of her tropes get over-stretched, but I think really interesting things start to happen at those points. In her letter to her husband, she tests the orthodox definition of marriage with the empirical reality of her separation from her husband. Her conclusion simply re-employs the initial definition, but is undercut because it is still part of the construction that begins with "I wish." What the poem says is orthodox Christianity, but what it does is something very different.
Taylor is a bit behind the times with his metaphysical verse, but his "Preface" from God's Determinations uses sacred and profane definitions of "all" and "nothing" to question the stable meaning of both.
Finally, a question for the both of you: should I be doing more meta-analysis? Is close reading a waste of time given the quantity we must read? Is it best to have a specific sense of a few things these authors have written, or a more general sense of what they "stand for"?
This is just a general comment - you guys know that this web-log isn't for a grade, right? 'The Teacher' isn't going to look at it - while the fourteen page long posts are super-dope, you know you should all feel free to post at any time - short, long, a sentence, a question - in the middle of reading you might have an idea that you could post. Just a suggestion; might make things seem less ponderous.
Hey Brent,
I think you should post whatever you want -- close-reading, meta, etc. I'm using this to deposit my thoughts. Think of it as a garbage dump... or something more aesthetic.
Damn Locke. Do you have any thoughts on how Edwards stems out of Locke? I notice a little prefiguration of Hobbes in Winthrop, with the idea of "natural law" being very different (kill your enemy) from the law of grace "love thine enemies").
The difference between Winthrop and Hobbes...I guess it's in their assumptions regarding rational actors. Hobbes assumes people will do what is in their best interests as to remaining alive, while Winthrop expects what seems at times to be the opposite.
Locke and Edwards is a tricky one, and one I'm not sure about. I'd love to hear what Melvin has to say on this one. Locke's concept of the accumulation of experience on the tabula rasa is something like Edwards' idea about the accumulation of sin...but I'm not sure how far this idea can go. My idea in the posting was as simple as thinking about Locke as an empiricist in the broadest sense. Edwards takes scripture fairly literally in positing the number of souls in hell; if one thinks rationally, most people have probably not followed every Biblical precept, and are therefore burning away. You know, in some ways it seems a bit like Hobbes' justifying the divine right of kings. Someone help.
Thanks for the reminder, Melvin.
Gender! I like it. I assume that there are some educational/occupational problems here... if you're bearing a million kids and cleaning the house, you don't have so much time to sit over your books and ponder theology... if you were educated to, which is questionable certainly for Rowlandson, and Bradstreet was well-educated, but perhaps not to that level.
Edwards and Winthrop come out of different phases of Puritanism -- Edwards comes of a revivalist wave that is not as concerned with covenanting and more concerned with the absolute decree of God. (This refers to the theological covenant, not the societal translation of covenant.)
My grammar really goes when I'm tired.
Forgot to ask-- Brent, if Taylor is metaphysical and behind the times (to me metaphysical = Donne, tell me if I'm wrong), who or what exactly would be au courant at this moment? Recall my great poetic ignorance.
Taylor's era would be late Milton, early sensibility stuff (correct me if I'm wrong, Melvin). Dryden, certainly. Based on the few discussion I have had with Prof. Lipking, you frequently find this kind of thing in early American poetry -- their poetic models don't show up in printed form in the colonies for quite a while. (This also has to do with a problem Lipking had with Moon's presentation -- that Moon ignored an edition of Ovid that had been popular in England a good half-century prior to Wheatley's writing.) This kind of delay-time is also one reason why I want to do that 18th C. poetry class with Lipking. Establishing context is really tough with the scarcity of actual texts. So I didn't mean to say that Taylor was somehow deficient in following an older model; he probably didn't have any choice. That was more of an off-handed comment, but it's something I'm interested in exploring in more detail later on.
Edward Taylor (1642-1729) would've been about our age during the Restoration - so he's roughly a contemporary of Milton and Dryden. Dryden died in 1700. Paradise Lost was published 1667. Donne, of course, died in 1650.
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