Puritanism in American Literature

Puritanism in American Literature The Puritans had a large make in American literature and cool off influence clean judgment and religious beliefs in the United States to this day. Puritan indite material was used to glorify God and to relate God more at once to our world. Puritan literature was commonly a realistic approach to life. Puritanism as a historical phenomenon and as a living presence in American life has enriched American literature in modes out-of-the-way(prenominal) too numerous to detail here. (G. Perkins B.Perkins Phillip Leininger 888) Puritanism is a collection of many unalike religious and policy-making beliefs. Common styles of Puritan writing argon protestant, Calvinist, purposiveness, and the literary productions too directly reflected the character of the readers who were literate and strongly religious. Pragmaticism and both political and religious Idealism atomic number 18 frequently themes in Puritan literature. Puritanism consequently laid th e basis for Americanism. It did so on the basis not of philosophical or legal argument, but of Christian belief base on the Bible. Gelernter 25)The Calvinist ideology, which was popular in Puritanism was based off of the Five Points, which ar total delinquency, unconditional preference, limited atonement, everywherewhelming grace, and the perseverance of the saints. Total depravity is the psyche that alone humans are born sinful. Unconditional election means that God chooses who he wants to save and also contains the concept of predestination, which is an ideology that God damns certain individuals for the salvation of others. This also ties in with limited atonement, the ideology that Jesus only died for a selected assort of individuals, not for everyone.The ideology of irresistible grace is that the saving and transfiguring power of God, cannot be either earned or denied. Perseverance of the saints is the ideological belief that elected individuals have the power to sub mit the will of God and to live in an upright fashion. The Puritans had secular concerns as well as religious. Puritans believed in realizeing hard, and doing selfless things to help others. Puritans also believed in typology, the belief that Gods intentions are present in human natural action and in natural phenomenon.Failures to understand these intentions are human limitations. (American Puritanism A Brief Introduction) In 1620, William Bradford formed the Plymouth Plantation with a group of Europeans that came with him to America. In only a year, their number of survivors decreased by half. Bradford unploughed a journal that chronicled the first 30 years of Plymouth Colony. Plain spoken communication was the high literary value of this society, as expressed by William Bradford, who enjoined a plain style, with singular regard to the simple truth in all things. (The Influence of Puritanism on American Literature) In this journal, he exhibited statecraft and integrity, the abi lity to assure the colonys survival, and made a parcel in avoiding potential disasters. His principles established religious freedom and self-government that later on shaped American colonial government. John Winthrop wrote A Modell of Christian kindness either before he crossed into America in 1630 or along his journey to the New World. In this book, the struggles that were to be faced in the New World are discussed along with Winthrops ideas and plans to overcome them.Winthrop was considered to be a contributor to the concept of American exceptionalism, the idea that the New World is unique to other countries by ideology based on laissez-faire and egalitarianism along with liberty. Winthrop has also portrayed that Puritans were incomplete visionaries nor self-conscious heroes. They were a part of society that believed in solid work such as building homes, trading, farming, and government. Anne Bradstreet was unique to authors of her time because her work had literary creativit y and artistic merit and was written for literature.In contrast, works of Winthrop and Bradford were written for historical purposes and to express their positions and political beliefs on certain positions. In England in 1650, some of Bradstreets poems compiled together by her brother-in-law who named them The Tenth Muse. The first of these poems was the Four Elements, which are fire, water, earth, and air. The Constitutions were the four temperaments of man kind as they were seen by medieval and renascence physiology, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic, and sanguine.The four Ages of Man, which are child, teen, adult, and elder as Seasons of the Year which are Fall, Spring, pass and Winter were described and explained. Bradstreet was better with her knowledge of literature rather than her witness personal opinions directly. In some poems, Bradstreet displays deep affections of the patriarchal Puritan habitation and a sensuous response to nature. Bradstreets literature showed bot h sides of the spectrum by upholding puritan beliefs as well as creating artistic merit. The American publications of the seventeenth century possess as a whole no great artistic merit.They are valuable chiefly as a study in origins and as a complex mirror of earlyish American be. The world that they reflect is that of the Renaissance and reformation, of Raleigh and Calvin and Cromwell, modified by its contact with the American wilderness. (American Literature Lectures, reveal I) They are valuable in the sense as it is a study in origins of popular religious and political ideology of the early American experience that helped shape present day America. This experience was one that reflected the Renaissance and Reformation of individuals such as Calvin and Bradstreet.The branch of Reformation in Puritan ideology was one of the main topics of early American literature. In this Puritan literature, the opinion of the a Puritan is shown through its consciousness of sin, Calvinistic beliefs, superstitions, contradicting beliefs of orthodoxy and nonconformity, and its preference to moral value over aesthetic value. Puritan tradition was a study influence in our nations government through establishments of principles such as the race between church and state and governments popular sovereignty.Puritanism has contributed to the way our day-to-day lives are carried on. It has also contributed the way literature has transformed over the years. Many political and religious ideologies from Puritan literature are still upheld today. Works Cited Gelernter, David. Puritanism lives. The American Enterprise17. 4 (2006) 25+. Student Edition. Web. 18 Dec. 2011. Puritans and Puritanism. Benets Readers cyclopaedia of American Literature. George B. Perkins, Barbara Perkins, and Phillip Leininger. Vol. 1. New York HarperCollins, 1991. 888. Student Edition.Web. 18 Dec. 2011. PAL American Puritanism A Brief Introduction. California State University Stanislaus Home. N. p. , n. d. Web. 18 Dec. 2011. . Renaissance, the, the Reformation. American Literature Lectures, Part I. Texas. Net Lonestar. N. p. , n. d. Web. 18 Dec. 2011. http//lonestar. texas. net/mseifert/amlit1. html Signet, Theodore Dreiser. New York, and 1964. 815-28.. The Influence of Puritanism on American Literature The exacting Reader A Haven for Book Lovers. Compulsive Reader. N. p. , n. d. Web. 18 Dec. 2011. .