Mr. Gunnar English 10 Two Colonial Poets: Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley

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1 Mr. Gunnar English 10 Two Colonial Poets: Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley Learning Goals Students will demonstrate their understanding of how: to read critically as a process in explicating a poem; historical and cultural context can reveal an author s purpose; historical and cultural context impacts a text; authors create mood and tone through figurative language, diction and syntax; authors choose words carefully for their connotative meaning; authors express arguments through their texts; motifs develop themes; authors appeal to ethos, their credibility. 1. Before reading the poem, read Bradstreet s short biography. Note that Bradstreet intended Prologue, an introduction to a collection of poems, remain unpublished. 2. Read the poem, noting specific lines that refer to the mores of Puritan culture, and briefly summarize it. Why do you think she had little or no desire to publish her work? 3. Circle words that have flawed as a connotative meaning. To what does she primarily associate those words? 4. In line 6, what is the connotation of obscure? Speculate why does she choose that word? 5. Bearing in mind that Bartas is a poet whom Bradstreet admired, what point does she make in the second stanza? 6. What comparison does she make in the third and fourth stanzas? Why does she make it? 7. Describe the tone change in stanza 5. What is her argument? The word obnoxious has many meanings, including archaic meanings. Is she employing more than one? Look up obnoxious in a good dictionary and speculate on Bradstreet s use of the term. 8. How does she address that argument in stanza 6? How does she support it? This is an appeal to authority, an appeal to credibility, to ethos. 9. Many poets at the time wrote in the neoclassical tradition, a tradition they felt was established by the famous Greek and Roman poets. For example, British neoclassical poet Alexander Pope asserts that the artistic rules were "discovered" not "devised" ( Essay on Criticism ). Why, then, is it significant that Bradstreet refers to the Muses? How does this reference help establish her argument? 10. In stanzas 7 and 8, Bradsteet changes tone again; she makes concessions to her argument. Point out specific clues.

2 11. Metonymy is a figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated as in the crown when referring to a king or queen. Find an example of metonymy in the last stanza. 12. What point does she make in the last stanza? 13. In #3, you were asked to circle words having flawed as a connotative meaning. The repetitive theme flawed is a motif. Note any other motifs you discover in the poem. 14. How do you think her contemporaries would react to this poem? Explain your answer. 15. Now that you have closely examined the poem, explain the author s purpose and meaning. 16. Before reading the poem, read Wheatley s short biography. Note that Wheatley s poems were written 100 years later than Bradstreet s, many at the time of the Revolutionary War. 17. Describe the tone of Wheatley s poem. What clues lead to your assessment of the tone? Contrast it to Bradstreet s. 18. How do you think Wheatley defines wisdom? Is it based on more than knowledge? 19. What figurative language technique does Wheatley apply to virtue and chastity? Why does she do this? 20. In line 13, Wheatley uses the term retinue. Without consulting a dictionary, determine the meaning of the word through context clues. Why does she use this word? 21. Do you discover any motifs? Circle the words associated with them. 22. Whom is she addressing? Define her argument. 23. In another poem she states, Some view our sable race with scornful eye, / Their colour is a diabolic die. " Considering the context the dominant culture s view of the slave ascertain her purposes in writing this poem. Compare her purpose to Bradstreet s. How do both poems address societal misconceptions? 2

3 Anne Bradstreet Biography by Ann Woodlief Anne Bradstreet was born in 1612 to a nonconformist former soldier of Queen Elizabeth, Thomas Dudley, who managed the affairs of the Earl of Lincoln. In 1630 he sailed with his family for America with the Massachusetts Bay Company. Also sailing was his associate and son-in-law, Simon Bradstreet. At 25, he had married Anne Dudley, 16, his childhood sweetheart. Anne had been well tutored in literature and history in Greek, Latin, French, Hebrew, as well as English. The voyage on the "Arbella" with John Winthrop took three months and was quite difficult, with several people dying from the experience. Life was rough and cold, quite a change from the beautiful estate with its well-stocked library where Anne spent many hours. As Anne tells her children in her memoirs, "I found a new world and new manners at which my heart rose [up in protest.]"a. However, she did decide to join the church at Boston. As White writes, "instead of looking outward and writing her observations on this unfamiliar scene with its rough and fearsome aspects, she let her homesick imagination turn inward, marshalled the images from her store of learning and dressed them in careful homespun garments." Historically, Anne's identity is primarily linked to her prominent father and husband, both governors of Massachusetts who left portraits and numerous records. Though she appreciated their love and protection, "any woman who sought to use her wit, charm, or intelligence in the community at large found herself ridiculed, banished, or executed by the Colony's powerful group of male leaders."her domain was to be domestic, separated from the linked affairs of church and state, even "deriving her ideas of God from the contemplations of her husband's excellencies," according to one document. This situation was surely made painfully clear to her in the fate of her friend Anne Hutchinson, also intelligent, educated, of a prosperous family and deeply religious. The mother of 14 children and a dynamic speaker, Hutchinson held prayer meetings where women debated religious and ethical ideas. Her belief that the Holy Spirit dwells within a justified person and so is not based on the good works necessary for admission to the church was considered heretical; she was labelled a Jezebel and banished, eventually slain in an Indian attack in New York. No wonder Bradstreet was not anxious to publish her poetry and especially kept her more personal works private. Bradstreet wrote epitaphs for both her mother and father which not only show her love for them but shows them as models of male and female behavior in the Puritan culture. An Epitaph on my dear and ever honoured mother, Mrs. Dorothy Dudley, Who deceased December 27, 1643, and of her age, 61 Here lies/ A worthy matron of unspotted life,/ A loving mother and obedient wife,/ A friendly neighbor, pitiful to poor,/ Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store;/ To servants wisely aweful, but yet kind,/ And as they did, so they reward did find:/ A true instructor of her family,/ The which she ordered with dexterity,/ The public meetings ever did frequent,/ And in her closest constant hours she spent;/ Religious in all her words and ways,/ Preparing still for death, till end of days:/ Of all her children, children lived to see,/ Then dying, left a blessed memory. Compare this with the epitaph she wrote for her father: Within this tomb a patriot lies/ That was both pious, just and wise,/ To truth a shield, to right a wall,/ To sectaries a whip and maul,/ A magazine of history,/ A prizer of good company/ In manners pleasant and severe/ The good him loved, the bad did fear,/ And when his time with years was spent/ In some rejoiced, more did lament./ 1653, age 77 3

4 There is little evidence about Anne's life in Massachusetts beyond that given in her poetry--no portrait, no grave marker (though there is a house in Ipswich, MA). She and her family moved several times, always to more remote frontier areas where Simon could accumulate more property and political power. They would have been quite vulnerable to Indian attack there; families of powerful Puritans were often singled out for kidnapping and ransom. Her poems tell us that she loved her husband deeply and missed him greatly when he left frequently on colony business to England and other settlements (he was a competent administrator and eventually governor). However, her feelings about him, as well as about her Puritan faith and her position as a woman in the Puritan community, seem complex and perhaps mixed. They had 8 children within about 10 years, all of whom survived childhood. She was frequently ill and anticipated dying, especially in childbirth, but she lived to be 60 years old. Anne seems to have written poetry primarily for herself, her family, and her friends, many of whom were very well educated. Her early, more imitative poetry, taken to England by her brother-in-law (possibly without her permission), appeared as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America in 1650 when she was 38 and sold well in England. Her later works, not published in her lifetime although shared with friends and family, were more private and personal--and far more original-- than those published in The Tenth Muse. Her love poetry, of course, falls in this group which in style and subject matter was unique for her time, strikingly different from the poetry written by male contemporaries, even those in Massachusetts such as Edward Taylor and Michael Wigglesworth. Although she may have seemed to some a strange aberration of womanhood at the time, she evidently took herself very seriously as an intellectual and a poet. She read widely in history, science, and literature, especially the works of Guillame du Bartas, studying her craft and gradually developing a confident poetic voice. Her "apologies" were very likely more a ironic than sincere, responding to those Puritans who felt women should be silent, modest, living in the private rather than the public sphere. She could be humorous with her "feminist" views, as in a poem on Queen Elizabeth I: Now say, have women worth, or have they none Or had they some, but with our Queen is't gone? Nay, masculines, you have taxed us long; But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong. Let such as say our sex is void of reason, Know 'tis a slander now, but once was treason. One must remember that she was a Puritan, although she often doubted, questioning the power of the male hierarchy, even questioning God (or the harsh Puritan concept of a judgmental God). Her love of nature and the physical world, as well as the spiritual, often caused creative conflict in her poetry. Though she finds great hope in the future promises of religion, she also finds great pleasures in the realities of the present, especially of her family, her home and nature (though she realized that perhaps she should not, according to the Puritan perspective). Although few other American women were to publish poetry for the next 200 years, her poetry was generally ignored until "rediscovered" by feminists in the 20th century. These critics have found many significant artistic qualities in her work. 4

5 The source of the text below is The Works of Anne Bradstreet in Prose and Verse, John Harvard Ellis, ed., THE PROLOGUE To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings, Of cities founded, commonwealths begun, For my mean pen are too superior things: Or how they all or each their dates have run, 5 Let poets and historians set these forth, My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth. But when my wondering eyes and envious heart Great Bartas' sugared lines do but read o'er, Fool I do grudge the Muses did not part 10 'Twixt him and me that overfluent store; A Bartas can do what a Bartas will, But simple I according to my skill. From schoolboys' tongues no rhet'rick we expect, Nor yet a sweet consort from broken strings, 15 Nor perfect beauty where's a main defect: My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings And this to mend, alas, no art is able, 'Cause nature made it so irreparable. Nor can I, like that fluent sweet-tongued Greek 20 Who lisped at first, in future times speak plain; By art he gladly found what he did seek A full requital of his striving pain. Art can do much, but this maxim's most sure: A weak or wounded brain admits no cure. 25 I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits, A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on female wits: If what I do prove well, it won't advance, 30 They'll say it's stolen, or else it was by chance. But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild, Else of our sex why feignéd they those nine, And poesy made Calliope's own child? So 'mongst the rest they placed the arts divine. 35 But this weak knot they will full soon untie The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lie. Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are, Men have precedency and still excel. It is but vain unjustly to wage war, 40 Men can do best, and women know it well. Preeminence in all and each is yours Yet grant some small acknowledgment of ours. And oh ye high-flown quills that soar the skies, And ever with your prey still catch your praise, 45 If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes, Give thyme or parsley wreath, I ask no bays. This mean and unrefinéd ore of mine Will make your glistering gold but more to shine. Phillis Wheatley ( ): A Brief Biography Phillis Wheatley was born in Gambia, Africa. She was a slave child of seven or eight and sold to John and Susanna Wheatley in Boston on July 11, Her first name was apparently derived from the ship that carried her to America, The Phillis. During her life, while it was not common for American women to be published, it was especially uncommon for children of slaves to be educated at all. Her gift of writing poetry was encouraged by her owners and their daughter, Mary; they taught Phillis to read and write, with her first poem being published at the age of twelve, "On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin." The countess of Huntingdon, Selina Hastings, was a friend of the Wheatley's who greatly encouraged and financed the publication of her book of poetry, Poems. Obour Tanner, a former slave who made the journey through the middle passage with Phillis also was one of the chief influences and supporters of Phillis' craft. She was especially fond of writing in the elegiac poetry style, perhaps mirroring the genre of oration taught to her through the women in her African American tribal group. Her elegy on a popular 5

6 evangelical Methodist minister, George Whitefield, brought her instant success upon his death. She also was well versed in Latin which allowed her to write in the epyllion (short epic) style with the publication of "Niobe in Distress." Phillis' popularity as a poet both in the United States and England ultimately brought her freedom from slavery on October 18, She even appeared before General Washington in March, 1776 for her poetry and was a strong supporter of independence during the Revolutionary War. She felt slavery to be the issue which separated whites from true heroism: whites can not "hope to find/deivine acceptance with th' Almighty mind" when "they disgrace/and hold in bondage Afric's blameless race." Phyllis is remembered for many first time accomplishments from a woman of her day: First African American to publish a book An accomplished African American woman of letters First African American woman to earn a living from her writing First woman writer encouraged and financed by a group of women (Mrs. Wheatley, Mary Wheatly, and Selina Hastings.) From: Women in History. Phillis Wheatley biography. Lakewood Public Library. < On Virtue by Phillis Wheatley O Thou bright jewel in my aim I strive To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach. I cease to wonder, and no more attempt Thine height t' explore, or fathom thy profound. But, O my soul, sink not into despair, Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand Would now embrace thee, hovers o'er thine head. Fain would the heav'n-born soul with her converse, Then seek, then court her for her promis'd bliss. 10 Auspicious queen, thine heav'nly pinions spread, And lead celestial Chastity along; Lo! now her sacred retinue descends, Array'd in glory from the orbs above. Attend me, Virtue, thro' my youthful years! O leave me not to the false joys of time! But guide my steps to endless life and bliss. Greatness, or Goodness, say what I shall call thee, To give me an higher appellation still, Teach me a better strain, a nobler lay, O thou, enthron'd with Cherubs in the realms of day!

Anne Bradstreet, Puritan Women, Plain Style Writing

Anne Bradstreet, Puritan Women, Plain Style Writing Anne Bradstreet: Wife, Mother, Poet Background Information and Notes Notebook Part 1 (info in blue MUST be recorded in notebook) Born 1612 to Mr. and