Anne Bradstreet Plain Style and Ornate Style

1. Anne Bradstreet Plain Style and Ornate Style

2. Plain Style • Simple words in clear order • Most Puritan’s wrote in plain style because, as they saw it, God’s word could not be improved by human decoration • Wished to make divine words so everyone could understand it • Homely and raw “from the wilderness”

3. 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

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. 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.

6. Ornate Style • Meaning can be simple but clouded by the ornate style • References to ideas/works people may not know • Odd sentence structure • parallelism

7. 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

8. Lyric Poetry---brief poems that express the writer’s personal feelings and thoughts.