Resumo Aula 01 Literatura Norte-Americana

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Introduction 
 
 
In order to understand the American Literature, we do need to understand its historical 
context, thoughts and beliefs of each time. By starting from the late 16th century, we 
can say that there was a group of people who were dissatisfied with the Church of 
England. These people were called Puritans due to their work towards religion and 
moral standards. 
 
It so happens that the Puritans aimed to purify the Church of England by returning to 
the values of early Christianity with a view to recognizing only the Bible as a religious 
reference. As a matter of fact, the Puritans’ interpretation of America was related to the 
so called “American dream”. 
 
In fact, the Bible stimulated the Puritans by promoting discussions of literature. 
Consequently, they were encouraged to create their own religious poetry. 
 
 
 
 
 
An important Puritan poet: Anne Bradsreet 
 
 
Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan, and the content of her poems usually empathized her 
faith in God and eternal life. 
 
Motherhood and marriage for Anne were all based on the Puritan ideal of a loving, 
respectful partnership and the traditional feminine role. 
 
By analyzing her poems, her strength through the vicissitudes of life lay on 
predestination, in other words, God’s will. 
 
 
For the author, Heaven is more important than Earth, but she clearly shows her thought 
process with the reader, making her work so relatable four centuries after her death. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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An important preacher and theologist: Jonathan Edwards 
 
By reading one of Edwards’ sermons entitled Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, you 
can recognize his literary tendency to reform the values of theology with determinism 
and still showing his Puritan origins. 
 
Sinners in the hands of an angry God (1741): 
 
 
If God should let you go, you would immediately sink, and sinfully descend, and plunge 
into the bottomless gulf... The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as 
one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is 
dreadfully provoked... he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into 
the bottomless gulf. 
 
 
The age of Enlightment 
 
On the late 17th century people started questioning the role of church or even the Bible 
in their lives. 
 
The Age of Reason gave rise to a completely new way of thinking. 
Instead of trying to believe in God as being responsible for everything in their lives, 
people started to consider how they could be in control of the world around them. 
 
Consequently, a new focus on scientific discovery and a boom in higher education 
started to take place. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Thomas Paine: an English American writer and pamphleteer 
 
Paine’s Common Sense and other writings had a great influence in the American 
Revolution, and helped pave the way for the Declaration of Independence. 
 
Here are some of Thomas Paine’s quotes to help you identify his revolutionary ideas: 
 
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, 
by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any 
Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church”. [Thomas Paine, The age of 
reason] 
 
“It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. 
Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to 
believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I 
may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far 
corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief 
to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every 
other crime”. [Thomas Paine, The age of reason] 
 
 
“Toleration is not the opposite of intoleration, but it is the counterfeit of it. Both are 
despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, and 
the other of granting it. The one is the pope, armed with fire and fagot, and the other is 
the pope selling or granting indulgences”. [Thomas Paine, The rights of man] 
 
“The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used 
any other, and I trust I never shall”. [Thomas Paine, The age of reason] 
 
“Until an independence is declared the continent will feel itself like a man who continues 
putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done, 
 
 
 
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hates to set about it, wishes it over, and is continually haunted with the thoughts of its 
necessity”. [Thomas Paine, The common sense] 
 
“Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of 
mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the 
machinery of government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to 
whatever is dictated to it”. [Thomas Paine, The rights of man: being an answer to Mr. 
Burke's attack on the French revolution, Part the First, Conclusion] 
“It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never 
mean the exclusion should take place on themselves”. [Thomas Paine, Inspiration and 
wisdom from the writings of Thomas Paine]