Early Colonial English In Virginia Analysis
CHAPTER I
EARLY COLONIAL LITERATURE. 1607-1700
I. The English in Virginia.
II. Pilgrims and Puritans in New England.
III. The New England Clergy.
IV. Puritan Poetry in New England.
I. THE ENGLISH IN VIRGINIA: CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH, WILLIAM STRACHEY, GEORGE SANDYS.
THE story of a nation's literature ordinarily has its beginning far back in the remoter history of that nation, obscured by the uncertainties of an age of which no trustworthy records have been preserved. The earliest writings of a people are usually the first efforts at literary production of a race in its childhood; and as these compositions develop they record the intellectual and artistic growth of the race. The conditions which attended the development of literature in America, …show more content…
His life since leaving his home on a Lincolnshire farm at sixteen years of age, had been replete with romantic adventure. He had been a soldier in the French army and had served in that of Holland. He had wandered through Italy and Greece into the countries of eastern Europe, and had lived for a year in Turkey and Tartary. He had been in Russia, in Germany, in Spain, and in Africa, and was familiar with the islands of the Mediterranean and those of the eastern Atlantic. Smith afterward wrote a narrative of his singularly full and adventurous life, not sparing, apparently, the embellishment which in his time seems to have been reckoned a natural feature of narrative art. The honesty of his statements has been doubted, perhaps to the point of injustice; and at the present time a reaction is to be seen which presents the writings of the sturdy old adventurer in a more favorable …show more content…
They were Puritans, -- for the most part well-to ffb -do, prosperous people; many of them had been educated in the universities, and brought the reverence for education with them. "If God make thee a good Christian and a good scholar, thou hast all that thy mother ever asked for thee," said a Puritan matron to her son. The colonists who within the next fifty years dotted the New England coast-line with their thrifty settlements were idealists. As Professor Tyler puts it, they established "not an agricultural community, nor a manufacturing community, nor a trading community; it was a thinking community." Moral earnestness characterized every action. In 1636, the General Court of Massachusetts voted to establish a college at Newtown; John Harvard, dying two years later, bequeathed his library and half his estate to the school, which was then named Harvard College in his honor. In 1639, the first printing-press in America was set up at Cambridge, as Newtown was then named out of compliment to the numerous graduates of the English university, then settled in this vicinity. The colonists had their grammar schools which prepared for college; and by 1650 public instruction was compulsory in four of the Five New England colonies, Rhode Island being the exception.
The earliest literary efforts among the New England colonists
EARLY COLONIAL LITERATURE. 1607-1700
I. The English in Virginia.
II. Pilgrims and Puritans in New England.
III. The New England Clergy.
IV. Puritan Poetry in New England.
I. THE ENGLISH IN VIRGINIA: CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH, WILLIAM STRACHEY, GEORGE SANDYS.
THE story of a nation's literature ordinarily has its beginning far back in the remoter history of that nation, obscured by the uncertainties of an age of which no trustworthy records have been preserved. The earliest writings of a people are usually the first efforts at literary production of a race in its childhood; and as these compositions develop they record the intellectual and artistic growth of the race. The conditions which attended the development of literature in America, …show more content…
His life since leaving his home on a Lincolnshire farm at sixteen years of age, had been replete with romantic adventure. He had been a soldier in the French army and had served in that of Holland. He had wandered through Italy and Greece into the countries of eastern Europe, and had lived for a year in Turkey and Tartary. He had been in Russia, in Germany, in Spain, and in Africa, and was familiar with the islands of the Mediterranean and those of the eastern Atlantic. Smith afterward wrote a narrative of his singularly full and adventurous life, not sparing, apparently, the embellishment which in his time seems to have been reckoned a natural feature of narrative art. The honesty of his statements has been doubted, perhaps to the point of injustice; and at the present time a reaction is to be seen which presents the writings of the sturdy old adventurer in a more favorable …show more content…
They were Puritans, -- for the most part well-to ffb -do, prosperous people; many of them had been educated in the universities, and brought the reverence for education with them. "If God make thee a good Christian and a good scholar, thou hast all that thy mother ever asked for thee," said a Puritan matron to her son. The colonists who within the next fifty years dotted the New England coast-line with their thrifty settlements were idealists. As Professor Tyler puts it, they established "not an agricultural community, nor a manufacturing community, nor a trading community; it was a thinking community." Moral earnestness characterized every action. In 1636, the General Court of Massachusetts voted to establish a college at Newtown; John Harvard, dying two years later, bequeathed his library and half his estate to the school, which was then named Harvard College in his honor. In 1639, the first printing-press in America was set up at Cambridge, as Newtown was then named out of compliment to the numerous graduates of the English university, then settled in this vicinity. The colonists had their grammar schools which prepared for college; and by 1650 public instruction was compulsory in four of the Five New England colonies, Rhode Island being the exception.
The earliest literary efforts among the New England colonists