Poetry and Puritanism for Spring 2014

While I’m going through the annotated bibliographies, I thought I’d post some sites from a student’s project on Puritanism.  The picture above is Augusta Bascombe’s “Puritan Thanksgiving,” a painting that I found at George Mason University’s site for History 120.  I am not able to find information about Ms. Bascombe, but I am guessing that she was active during the late 1800s or early 1900s.

This website (https://web.archive.org/web/20110209204523/http://annebradstreet.com/ ) is a good place to begin as it has a detailed biography, Anne Bradstreet’s poetry, and a bibliography. However, I’m not sure who put this site together even though it seems fairly professional.

Below are links to five of her poems. These would be interesting to compare to Rumi’s devotional poetry, John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, or even Petrarch’s poems written after the death of Laura.

 https://web.archive.org/web/20110912053202/http://www.annebradstreet.com/the_vanity_of_all_worldly_things.htm

 https://web.archive.org/web/20100917070932/http://annebradstreet.com/verses_upon_the_burning_of_our_house.htm

 https://web.archive.org/web/20100917071012/http://annebradstreet.com/before_the_birth_of_one_of_her_children.htm

 https://web.archive.org/web/20110912053830/http://www.annebradstreet.com/the_author_to_her_book.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20110912053002/http://www.annebradstreet.com/in_honour_of_that_high_and_mighty_princess_queen_elizabeth.htm

Would you consider Anne Bradstreet a poetess?
 http://idhmc.tamu.edu/poetess/index.html
 http://web.archive.org/web/20071102170216/http://www.ablemuse.com/critique/a-finch_poetess.htm

Below is an image of her family's house.  Am not sure whether it still exists.

Could it be this house in Rowley that her descendants visited?

Here is a history of Puritanism, which traces the ideology’s origins and, yes, distinguishes the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock from the Puritans. Some Puritans also settled in the New World, but others remained in England despite the political and religious persecution that they faced. (Also from 1642 to 1660, Britain was governed by Puritans.)
http://www.puritansermons.com/banner/logan1.htm

For more information on the English Civil War (in which the Puritans defeated the monarchy):

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~crossby/ECW/

http://history.boisestate.edu/WESTCIV/english/

Here, Scott Atkins distinguishes between American Puritans and British Puritans in a paper that is part of the University of Virginia’s Capitol Project.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/puritan/purmain.html

This comprehensive site by Bill Carlson covers both American and British Puritans.
http://www.puritansermons.com/hist.htm

Here is a famous poem by a male Puritan poet and clergyman, Michael Wigglesworth. Stephen Lawson, its editor, believes that this poem, “The Day of Doom,” is more representative of Puritan poetry than Mrs. Bradstreet’s poems are:

http://www.puritansermons.com/pdf/doom.pdf

Wigglesworth’s biography follows:

http://www.puritansermons.com/poetry/wigglife.htm

OK, OK, the Puritans did not live in Plymouth, but here is a link to Plimoth Plantation, the recreation of the Pilgrims’ settlement.  You may remember it from the video we watched in class.

http://www.plimoth.org/