Anne Bradstreet Plain Style and Ornate Style

1. Anne Bradstreet Plain Style and Ornate Style

2. The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America • 1st volume of poems published by an American • One of the 1st volumes of poetry in English written by a woman • Anne Bradstreet

3. To be a woman • Bradstreet, as other Puritan women, believed that men were superior to women • She felt it improper for a woman to appear in print • Too bad for her beliefs…she is considered the 1st American poet.

4. Bradstreet’s poetry • Some longer poems written in learned style on subjects such as medicine, history, and qualities of fire (in 1st published edition of poetry) • 2nd edition (28yrs later) contains shorter poems written in a simpler style, about children, husband, and home • Recurring theme: Puritan belief that one must not become too attached to things of the world

5. Plain Style • Used simple sentences and common words from everyday speech. • Contained few or no classical allusions, Latin quotations, or elaborate figures of speech. • Puritans used plain style because they felt it was much more effective in revealing God’s truth than the ornate style. • May be considered hard to read by today’s standards, but was simple by 17th century standards. • Homely and raw “from the wilderness”

6. According to Benjamin Franklin (not a Puritan) plain style writing should be “smooth, clear, and short.” • Perhaps this style has persisted over time b/c it appeals to American democracy, its straightforwardness, its ability to be understood by all, and the fact that it doesn’t hide the naked truth.

7. Ornate Style • Meaning can be simple but clouded by the ornate style • References to ideas/works people may not know • Allusions from Greek mythology, classical literature • Latin quotations or elaborate figures of speech

8. Plain Style vs. Ornate Style Complete on your own paper. In the left column of the chart below are two-descriptions of everyday objects written in an ornate style. Rewrite each description in plain style – as a Puritan might have.

9. Literary Terms • Diction---kinds of words chosen by an author (long, short, common, uncommon, etc…) • Bradstreet’s diction is of the plain style---short and conversational • Iambic couplet • Iambic refers to rhythmical pattern of unaccented syllable followed by accented • Couplet refers to two successive lines that rhyme • Both of Bradstreet’s poems are iambic couplets • Ex. “In silent night when rest I took, For sorrow ne’er I did not look, …”

10. Literary Terms cont. • Allusion – a reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, or some other branch of culture. • Example – The title of Sandra Cisnero’s essay “Straw into Gold” is an allusion to what folk/fairy tale? • Puritans used allusion in their writing to help explain or reference The Bible.

11. Literary Terms cont. • Extended Metaphoris a metaphor (comparison of 2 things w/o using “like” or “as”) that continues over multiple sentences, and that is sometimes extended throughout an entire work. • Extended metaphors allow writers to draw a larger comparison between two things or ideas. In rhetoric, they allow the audience to visualize a complex idea in a memorable way or tangible. They highlight a comparison in a more intense way than simple metaphors or similes.

12. Literary Terms cont. • “Upon the Burning of Our House” is filled with inversions. • Inversions are sentences that are not written in normal word order. • Normal word order is subject 1st, predicate 2nd. • In inversion, the word order is reversed – the predicate comes 1st, then the subject 2nd. • Ex. Bradstreet writes, “I wakened was with thund’ring noise” instead of “I was wakened with thund’ring noise.”

13. Literary Terms cont. • Inversion is often used to make a poem’s rhyme scheme work out or to maintain a fixed meter (patterns of stressed, unstressed syllables). Poets in Anne Bradstreet’s time often used this grammatical device to allow the word order to be reversed in order for the lines to rhyme.

14. Poetic Inversion • Draw the chart below on your own paper. Read the examples of poetic inversion. Read these sentences carefully. Then, “translate” each phrase into its ordinary, natural word order. One inversion has been done for you.