Sinners and Saints: Introduction
In the beginning...
The story of American literature begins with tribal people who lived on the North American continent all along. Native Americans had many stories, but their stories were rarely written down. Instead they were passed down from generation to generation orally (by telling them).
Then the Europeans boarded their ships and, filled with dreams of golden mountains and rivers of silver, they braved sea monsters, storms, and falling off the edge of the world to come to the 'promised land.' These explorers wrote their stories in journals that they hoped would make them famous one day.
Unfortunately, reality is harsh, and the explorers didn't get what they wanted in the new world. But for others, it held the promise of freedom and a life far from the restrictions of European Kings and churches. And so the settlers came and wrote their stories in two distinct flavors: The Puritans, like William Bradford and Anne Bradstreet, who settled around New England, wrote poems, journals, and sermons dedicated to the simple life and to God who sustained them. The adventures, like John Smith, who settled in the South near Virginia, wrote journals, letters, and diaries to chronicle their lives in the wilderness.
The colonists were ruled by a crazy king across the ocean who demanded more and more control over them. Eventually, dissatisfaction led to rebellion, and the Revolution was born. The people of the Enlightenment wanted answers and autonomy, so they rebelled against the authority of the English King and church by wielding pen and sword. They wrote letters, speeches, newspapers, essays, poetry and finally fiction to express their emerging view of themselves and the world.
In this unit you will read such works written and told by Native Americans, explorers, Puritans, adventurers, and colonists. You will explore the concepts of audience, purpose, tone, main idea, and theme. You will analyze poetry and non-fiction through the lens of historical criticism. Later, through allegory and Aristotle's dramatic theory, you will experience the Puritan culture and the witch trials of Salem in a postmodern tragedy.
