Date: 3 November 2017

Topic: Anne Bradstreet

Visual Aid ngel Chaparro Sainz

Tutorials: Literatura Norteamericana I
Always remember / Recordad siempre
que
The information given here is only exploratory and introductory, a
summary and an invitation for your own reflection and study. I
will use these powerpoints as a visual aid to help your learning
process and follow a basic order in our examination of each author
and the execution of our tutorials.
Avoid plagiarism and use your own words, afterthoughts and
observations. Always remember that the content in these
powerpoints has been developed by a single person (me), in
relation to the compulsory material for this subject, and that
further commentary has been provided in the classroom.
You should always remember that the material that you need to
study and that will be used to mark your exams and PECs is not
these powerpoints but those specified in your Gua I y Gua II.
General Commentary
LITERATURA NORTEAMERICANA I

En esta asignatura se concibe la literatura norteamericana

como un estudio de los textos en su contexto sociocultural.
Por tanto, se ofrece una visin panormica de la literatura
norteamericana de los siglos XVII, XVIII y XIX mediante la
lectura de una seleccin de textos que siempre se estudian en
el marco de las corrientes ideolgicas y estticas de su
tiempo.
Actividades de aprendizaje
1) Lectura de los objetivos y de las instrucciones especficas para el
estudio de cada uno de los 24 temas (Learning objectives y
Suggestions for how to proceed en A Study Guide for American
Literature to 1900)
2) Lectura activa de la introduccin a las obras literarias de cada autor,
con el fin de situarlas en su contexto biogrfico, histrico y social.
3) Lectura y anlisis de los textos literarios, detalladamente anotados en
American Literature to 1900.
4) Ejercicios de autoevaluacin (American Literature to 1900)
5) 24 cuestionarios con los ejercicios de autoevaluacin (curso virtual)
6) Exploratory questions (American Literature to 1900 y orientaciones
adicionales en A Study Guide for American Literature to 1900)
7) Actividades prcticas
Temas y resultados de aprendizaje
GENERALES
1) Valorar la riqueza literaria norteamericana a travs de la lectura
e interpretacin de los textos ms significativos de los siglos
XVII, XVIII y XIX, considerando la diversidad cultural,
sociopoltica y tnica de sus principales autores.
2) Incrementar la sensibilidad hacia la problemtica sociopoltica y
cultural que engloba el estudio de los textos literarios
norteamericanos de los siglos XVII, XVIII y XIX.
3) Trabajar en grupo de forma constructiva, mostrando una buena
disposicin para desarrollar tareas de colaboracin con el equipo
docente de la Sede Central, con los profesores-tutores de los
Centros Asociados o de los Grupos de Tutora y con los dems
estudiantes de la asignatura.
4) Presentar los resultados de trabajo realizado individualmente,
reconociendo de modo explcito todas las fuentes de
informacin empleadas, evitando las diversas formas de plagio y
respetando los derechos de autor.
Temas y resultados de aprendizaje
ESPECFICOS
Autor: Anne Bradstreet
Resultados de aprendizaje:
1) Explicar cmo en la poesa norteamericana del siglo XVII se
fusionaron la sencilla esttica puritana y la ornamentacin
propia de la tradicin renacentista inglesa.
2) Analizar cuatro poemas de Anne Bradstreet en conexin con la
sociedad de su poca.
3) Identificar las caractersticas del discurso irnico, desarrollando
la capacidad de inferir significados implcitos.
4) Reconocer los elementos bsicos de la versificacin.
5) Aplicar la terminologa adecuada al anlisis estilstico de los
textos poticos.
Anne Bradstreet
1612-1672
Anne Bradstreet was the first
woman to be recognized as an
accomplished New World Poet.
Her volume of poetry The Tenth
Muse Lately Sprung Up in America ...
received considerable favorable
attention when it was first
published in London in 1650. Eight
years after it appeared it was listed
by William London in his Catalogue
of the Most Vendible Books in England,
and George III is reported to have
had the volume in his library.
Bradstreet's work has endured, and
she is still considered to be one of
the most important early American
poets.
poetryfoundation.org
 Anne Bradstreet
She was the first and only woman to publish her poetry at a time when literary
writing was a male territory. Furthermore, her Puritan upbringing rendered the
senses and imagination as unreliable and dangerous. In fact, literature was accepted
as long as it had a didactic purpose. Since poetry is a literary genre mainly
intended to deal with private feelings, it seemed to go against the Puritan sense of
social and communal work. It might not be by chance that her poetry is marked by
tensions that show her internal conflicts in her attempt to reconcile her needs
and desires with those of the community she belonged to, and her inner struggles
to control her impulses and cope with her religious doubts. Instead of Puritan
plain style she preferred the more elaborate rhetorical strategies of her
European contemporary writers, which she blended with Biblical allusions and
also classical quotations. She repudiated prejudices against women using a
skilled manipulation of ironic self-deprecation (self-mockery). Besides, many of
her poems deal with her domestic experiences, which she thus elevates to poetic
height.
 Anne Bradstreet: Life and work
Read pages 41 to 42 American Literature to 1900 for a good and brief biographical account that
considers her relation to the Puritan Church.
Long philosophical poems vs witty, daily-life poems. About the last ones, page 44: these
autobiographical pieces have warmth, intensity and poignancy; they are not derivative in content or
imitative in structure, as were the early ones, but born from her experience and constitute a more
mature work, full of genuine personal utterances. In spite of certain restraints, in her later poems
the author comes near to expressing her true voice.
When concerning only literature, on page 42, you have this interesting quotation:
Literary critics generally consider two aspects of Anne Bradstreet: on the one hand, her public self as a member
of a community of devout and strict Puritans, as the dutiful daughter of a prominent man and as the submissive
wife of a well-known colony official; and, on the other hand, her private self, emotionally attached to her family
as a wife, mother and grandmother. Her work shows the complex struggle to reconcile both aspects: the public
voice, which tends to be imitative, and the private voice, which is more original. She is often seen as a poet of
ambivalences and hesitancies, of unresolved conflicts, of tensions between her religious duty and her inner
feelings. She probably experienced some kind of self-division based on the tensions between what she thought
she ought to feel and what she really felt. (keep reading about Puritan theology and doctrine)
 Anne Bradstreet: Literary strategies
On page 43 in American Literature to 1900:
- Puritan aesthetics: plain style. They condemn figurative language (departing from the
literal meaning of words, sensual imagery, verbal artifice). Still, Puritans had different
influences: the Bible and classic models and contemporary writers (this is what some scholars
now call a gap between practice and theory and they establish a shift around the mid 17th-
century, when New England puritans seem to start a movement towards more literary forms:
that figurative and symbolic language could enhance the believers abilities to perceive divine
will).
- But also deepily influenced in the ornamented style of the Reniassance tradition.
- 16th-century poets (Sir Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh) and the
French Calvinist poet Guillaume du Bartas were a great influence. Also metaphysical poets
such as John Donne and George Herbert.
- Comparison between Anne Bradstreet and Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz (1651-1695, Siglo de
Oro): spiritual crises, religion and secular problems, poetic themes (read carefully the end
of page 43 and beginning of 44)
Anne Bradstreet: Key Words
17th Century Poetry: shaped by both Puritan aesthetics and the
ornamented style of the English Renaissance tradition.
Book: first published book of English poetry written by an inhabitant of
America.
Public & Private Voices: ironic discourse and the meaning hidden
under the words of socially constrained texts.
English metrical patterns.
Literary terms: extended metaphor, pun, tone, verbal irony, anaphora,
allusion, imagery, paradox, elegy, apostrophe, ambiguity, ambivalence, pathos,
theme, atmosphere, figurative language.
Theme; atmosphere; ambiguity; ambivalence; tone; self-construction of
her identity in her poems; feminine issues.
 Scansion or Scanning a Poem
To understand the fundamentals of verse form, you need to work out stress patterns for
yourself (Study Guide 27).
Scanning a Poem or Scannion usually involves measuring the stresses to determine the
metrical lines and defining the rhyme scheme.
STRESS PATTERNS: To understand the form of verses in the English language is necessary to
bear in mind that the stress is the key to measure each verse. It is by the use of feet that we will define
the metrics of a poem. Stress is understood as an additional loudness, or length, or voice intensity (SG
27). In other words, the syllable that you pronounce with a strongest intensity in a word.
The syllables which carry stress are called stressed, and those which do not carry stress
are called unstressed (SG 27).
When practicing scanning use the following pattern: write a slash mark (/) to indicate
each stressed syllable and the sign (x) to show each unstressed one (examples and tips on
how to proceed on your Study Guide, pages 27-28).
The smallest metrical unit of repeated pattern stress, formed by a group of two or three
syllables, is called a foot (SG 28).
Defining the feet
Define the prevailing pattern of stressing syllables that is repeated
in each line (read point 3 on your SG, page 28).
Types of feet:
- Iamb: x / (one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one)
- Trochee: / x (one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed
one)
- Anapest: x x / (two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed
one)
- Dactyl: / x x (one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed
ones)
- Spondee: // (two stressed syllables)
Defining the line
Depending on how many feet there are in each line we have a different
type of line being used:
- Tetrameter: four feet
- Pentameter: five feet
- Heptameter: seven feet
- Octameter: eight feet

- Iambic pentameter: it is the most preeminent in English poetry and

it consists of a line that has five feet and those feet are iambs, that is,
patterns of stress that follow the unstress-stress pattern.
- Example in To My Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet:
- Line 4:
- Compare with me ye women if you can.
Regularity and deviations
Pages 28-29 on your Study Guide:

Do not expect to find uniform regularity in all the lines, since some of
them may be shorter or longer than the predominant meter. Regularity
is not always at a premium. Poets often vary meter for effect, or simply
to avoid the tediousness provoked by the mechanichal repetition of a
rhythmic pattern. One source of variation is the shifting of metrical
accent (e.g. a foot which is expected to be an iamb turns out to be a
trochee). Although not all deviations from a basic metrical pattern seem
to be acceptable, a poet may choose to alter or break a regular pattern
for various reasons (e.g. to emphasize certain words or to disrupt
readers expectations). The irregularities of some lines tend to draw
attention to themselves.
Regularity and deviations
Caesura: a pause. Normally inserted near the middle and
indicated with punctuation (examples on your Study Guide,
page 29).

Scansion: readers may differ when perceiving stress.

Free verse: no fixed meter patterns. Much more

contemporary choice.You have a brief definition on page 29
of your Study Guide.
 Rhyme
Definition: the use of similar sounds in the stressed syllables at the ends of two or more words (SG
29).
Important because it creates harmony, reinforces or contributes to meaning, focuses readers
attention and it can also produce comic effects. It is optional.
You need to determine the rhyme scheme, that is, the pattern followed by every poem, usually,
this is done by assigning letters to the last syllable in each line.You have an example on page 30 in
your Study Guide.
Exact rhyme, perfect rhyme or full rhyme: when the final vowel sounds are the same, as well
as any consonant sounds that follow the vowels (SG 30)
Para-rhyme, partial rhyme, imperfect rhyme, half rhyme or slant rhyme: a repetition of
the consonant sounds following the vowel sounds, but the vowel sounds are not identical (SG 30)
Eye rhyme: spellings are similar, but the pronunciations are not (SG 30)
 Stanzas
A group of lines that usually have a set pattern of meter and rhyme (SG
31)
- Couplet: two lines that generally rhyme and same length. If the lines have
different lengths, then it is called a distich (dactylic hexameter followed by
dactylic pentameter).
- Tercet: three-line stanza.
- Quatrain: a four-line stanza. Most common in English.
- Sestet: six-line stanza.
- Octave or octet: an eight-line stanza. Ottava rima: iambic pentameters
with the following rhyme: abababcc (Spanish: octava real)

- SONNET: Types of stanzas, type of rhyme and type of meter.

- * On page 44 you have a list of the old forms.

 Tasks and resources
Read Unit 3 in American Literature to 1900 (pages 41 to 60)
Check the section in A Study Guide for American Literature to 1900 (25 to 32)
Four poems by Anne Bradstreet (ample introductory information before each
poem):
- The Author to Her Book (pages 45 to 47 in American Literature to 1900)
- To My Dear and Loving Husband (pages 49 to 50 in American Literature to
1900)
- Upon the Burning of Our House (pages 51 to 54 in American Literature to
1900)
- On My Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet (pages 55 to 56 in American
Literature to 1900)
Exploratory questions (this time, they are organized in a different way and
they come right after each poem); and the final Questions for Evaluation
(pages 58 to 60 in American Literature to 1900).