First English Settlements in America:

1607 - Jamestown (Virginia)

• secular settlement (gentlemen adventurers and their bond servants)

• trading post of the Virginia Company of London

• main survival crop : tobacco

• gave rise to the South of the plantation system & slavery

• 1^st governor: John Smith

• his chronicle of the colony: “A Description of New England”

• story of Pocahontas

1620 - Plymouth (New England)

• religious settlement (Pilgrim Fathers)

• relatively poor and austere Puritans

• arrived on the Mayflower

• out of 100 barely 50 survived

• main survival crop: corn

• 2^nd governor: William Bradford

• his chronicle of the colony: “Of Plymouth Plantation” (1620-50)

• Thanksgiving established

1630 - Massachussetts Bay Colony (Boston)

• religious settlement (prosperous, worldly Puritans)

• “Bible Commonwealth” (theocracy)

• 17 ships, 1000 settlers

• 1^st governor: John Winthrop

• chronicle of the colony: Samuel Sewall's “Diary”(1673-1729)

• religious persecution of Quakers, Jews, etc.

• Salem witchcrafr trials (1692)

Intellectual Background of American Literature

• Cosmopolitanism

• Puritanism

• Frontier

• Mysticism (Transcendentalism)

Five Calvinist Points (TULIP)

• Total Depravity

• Unconditional Election (Predestination)

• Limited Atonement

• Irresistable Grace

• Perseverance of Saints

Effects of Puritanism

• bondage of will

• theocracy

• special providence of God

• God's sovereignty

• righteousness

• elitist, aristocratic tendencies

• mood of gloom, severity, despair, fatalism (“once a sinner, always a sinner”)

• social inequality

Influence of the Frontier spirit:

• democracy

• egalitarianism (social equality and equal opportunities)

• spirit of enterprise & competition

• individualism

• free will

• self- reliance

• mood of buoyancy, enthusiasm, optimism

• political and economic independence

• uniformity of life

• idea of Christian perfection

Phases of Puritanism

• early, strict colonial times, requirement of second baptism (1620-1662)

• abolition of the requirement in Half-Way Covenant (1662)

• decline of Puritanism by 1725 (deism and rationalism of Locke, Shaftsbury, Paine)

• Great Awakening (1740s) - Jonathan Edwards & his sermons

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