What does it mean to be Individual?

1. What does it mean to be Individual? Puritanism and Early America (1492 – 1730)

2. Authors and Works • Anne Bradstreet – Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666 / To My Dear and Loving Husband • Jonathan Edwards – Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

3. Northern Puritanism Notes • - Escape from the Church of England. English authority and majority. • Life led through submission towards God and a disapproval of self-autonomy. Life was to lived to instruct and inspire how to achieve salvation from God for being sinful creatures needing spiritual saving. Imagination was not highly valued. • - The Three Puritan Beliefs (Instruction & Inspiration) • - Grace – Cleansing of envy, vanity, and lust allowed individual to achieve spiritual harmony with God. Spent lifetimes searching for “grace”. Spiritual Autobiographies – accounts into those who find “grace” (A Puritan guide) • - Plainness – no ornate cathedrals/stained-glass windows. Square wooden buildings, painted white or not at all, stripped of ornament and decoration. • - Divine Mission – America was a place specially appointed by God, and therefore Puritans believed it was their mission to spread the word of God in the New World. • Puritanism, as a way of life, lasted only about a century in America. • - Due to Age of Reason and lack of faith in strict religions. • - 1740’s – Great Awakening – revival of Puritanism but short lived.

4. Individual or Society? • Individual in Puritan Society • - Defined according to religion. (Puritan – North & Church of England – South) • - Individualism and free expression of thoughts suppressed for the “greater good”. Thoughts and actions prescribed according to tradition & religion. • - Work for the betterment of society. • - Was the individual completely suppressed during these times? How could one still maintain a sense of individuality while adhering to the traditions/beliefs carried over from Europe?

5. Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672) • First North American woman to publish a book of poems and she is a Puritan WOMAN. • Women writers? Yea right! - Step outside their appropriate sphere. - Frequently faced social censure. Reverend Thomas Parker to to his sister in England:“Your printing of a book, beyond the custom of your sex, doth rankly smell” (1650) - Crushing workloads and lack of writing time - Unequal access to education. However, Bradstreet received extensive education, came from a influential, well-to-do family. This gave her a unique platform. She was able to write and express her feelings, yet was still very much trapped by the traditions of male poets and their conventions/values. Finding a balance needed to be done wittily/subtly. Themes - culture and nature, spirituality and theology, mortal vs. eternal, faith and doubt, family, death, history.

6. "Upon a Fit of Sickness, Anno. 1632," Early Bradstreet Poetry. What do you notice? O Bubble blast, how long can'st last? That always art a breaking, No sooner blown, but dead and gone, Ev'n as a word that's speaking. O whil'st I live, this grace me give, I doing good may be, Then death's arrest I shall count best, because it's thy decree.

7. "Contemplations“Later Bradstreet poety.What do you notice? Then higher on the glistering Sun I gaz'd Whose beams was shaded by the leavie Tree, The more I look'd, the more I grew amaz'd And softly said, what glory's like to thee? Soul of this world, this Universes Eye, No wonder, some made thee a Deity: Had I not better known, (alas) the same had I

8. The Puritan Dilemma • How do I live for salvation when I am already made damned in the eyes of God? What is the point of giving myself to God? • Bradstreet committed herself to the religious concept of salvation because she loved life on earth. Her hope for heaven was an expression of her desire to live forever rather than a wish to transcend worldly concerns. For her, heaven promised the prolongation of earthly joys, rather than a renunciation of those pleasures she enjoyed in life. 

9. SELECTED ANNE BRADSTREET QUOTATIONS • If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. • If what I do prove well, it won't advance,They'll say it's stolen, or else it was by chance. • If ever two were one, then surely we.If ever man were loved by wife, then thee. • Iron, till it be thoroughly heated, is incapable to be wrought; so God sees good to cast some men into the furnace of affliction and then beats them on his anvil into what frame he pleases. • Let Greeks be Greeks and women what they are. • Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving, and old age of spending. • There is no object that we see; no action that we do; no good that we enjoy; no evil that we feel, or fear, but we may make some spiritual advantage of all: and he that makes such improvement is wise, as well as pious. • Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish. • for were earthly comforts permanent, who would look for heavenly?

10. Bradstreet Form, Style, Artistic Convention & Audience • Puritan plain style -Simplicity, accessibility, and genre of tragedy, epic events, and devotion, unity with the divine. “Thy love is such I can no way repay. The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. “ How do you think Bradstreet’s poems compared with women of this time? Of men? With the general Puritan society? How well do her themes travel across time? What elements seem to connect to contemporary concerns? What fails to relate? Why?

11. Willie B. • William BradfordBorn: Mar-1590Birthplace: Austerfield, Yorkshire, EnglandDied:9-May-1657Location of death:Plymouth, MAPush Broom: refined politician • Gender: MaleReligion: ProtestantRace or Ethnicity: WhiteOccupation:Religion • Executive summary: Governor of Plymouth Colony