Puritan literary influence on American writing

American Literature

It can be argued that all literature is a product of the culture within which it develops. This pattern can be seen in early American literature. The prehistory of early European-American writers were profoundly influenced by their European roots, and as the movement that became the American revolution developed, those changing influences affected American literature in significant ways.

Many early European settlers had British heritage and were of the Puritan faith. The Puritans were unique among the new settlers because many of them were highly educated. A significant number were college graduates (VanSpanckeren, 2004). As Puritans, they believed that the only acceptable purpose for writing was to emphasize the need to obey God and to avoid the temptations of Satan. Reading purely for entertainment was frowned upon.

However, as the new settlers got established in their new homeland, American events began to affect writing. Roger Williams, whose disagreements with religious beliefs forced him out of the Massachusetts Colony, had to flee for his life. He lived for some time with local Native Americans, and wrote truly American non-fiction in the form of a book about the local Native American culture (Cesarini, 2003). While his ultimate goal was still religious -- to convert the Native Americans to Christianity -- it was a book that could have only been written in the New World. It was American literature.

As American culture broadened and became less dominated by religion, American writers tended to imitate the English works with which they were familiar, causing a kind of stagnation in writing style. what one writer called "elegant neoclassicism." (Lossing, 1877) American culture was still dominated by its European roots, and people tended to write in the styles with which they were familiar.

One poet from this era, Philip Freneau, demonstrates the shift from European-dominated writing to writing that began to become purely American. Freneau's parents were Huguenots -- French religious separatists -- so he did not have the Puritan influences of many other writers of the time (Lossing, 1877). The cultural event causing this shift was the American Revolutionary War. Freneau started his writing career by imitating European styles, without the Puritan ethic to write only about spiritual matters. One example of this is his poem "On a Honey Bee," which opens:

Thou, born to sip the lake or spring,

or quaff the waters of the stream,

Why hither come on vagrant wings?-

Does Bacchus tempting seem-

Did he, for you, the glass prepare-

Will I admit you to a share?" (Boynton, 1918)

However, the Revolutionary War influenced Frenau's writing. One of his major works was a long poem written in three cantos about the horrors he experienced while being held prisoner on a British prison. ship. There we see a much edgier, angry Freneau who is willing to write about real life in real terms:

Here, generous Britain, generous, as you say,

To my parch'd tongue one cooling drop convey;

Hell has no mischief like a thirsty throat,

Nor one tormentor like your David Sproat."