Study guides, Class notes & Summaries

William Bradford -->First governor of Plymouth Colony. Wrote the Mayflower Compact which was the governing document of the colony and established the protection of individual rights against governmental tyranny. Wrote "Of Plymouth Plantation," which he never intended for publication. He wrote it in plain style: for a general readership, using common language and sentence structure to enable the common reader to easily understand the narrative. Called "The Father of American History....

American Literature before 1865 As we discussed in class, "typology" among the Puritans was a way of reading the signs of everyday life as indications of God's grace and the state of the individual's soul. Many Puritan texts read the "signs" of the world around them as a direct commentary on their faith. Select two or three of Anne Bradstreet's poems and discuss them as examples of "typology." [Note that the poems “Contemplations” (Norton p...