Colonial voices
American Literature · 11th grade
Where American literature begins
Today: American literature begins with writing that was not meant as literature, like a governor's history of a colony; Bradford's history is read in Harold Paget's modern English of 1909, and a reader takes its long sentences one clause at a time, finding the main clause first.
About 40 minutes to teach
Teach the idea
American literature, in this course, is the writing of the people who lived in what became the United States. Its first works were not written as literature at all: a governor's history, a mother's poems kept in a notebook, a minister's sermon. They are read as literature because they were written with care, for readers, and they have lasted.
William Bradford sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 and was chosen governor of Plymouth again and again until 1657. Bradford began the history in 1630, wrote it for the colony's own people rather than for print, and it was not printed whole until 1856. The lessons quote Harold Paget's modern English of 1909, so the spellings and many of the words are Paget's, much as a translation's words are the translator's.
Bradford promises to write "in a plain style and with singular regard to the truth." That was the Puritan ideal: say a thing clearly, without ornament, so the truth can be seen. But the sentences are long, clause piled on clause. The way in is to find the main clause first, who did what, and then read each part added to it.
At the landing Bradford stops the story to make the reader look, and measures the moment against two places in the Bible that every reader of the time knew. The words "savage barbarians" and "wild men" are Bradford's and that time's, read as the writer's view, not as a fact about the Native people.
Hannah reads:Book I, the plain style and the landing at Cape Cod
466 words
First I will unfold the causes that led to the foundation of the New Plymouth Settlement, and the motives of those concerned in it. In order that I may give an accurate account of the project, I must begin at the very root and rise of it; and this I shall endeavour to do in a plain style and with singular regard to the truth,—at least as near as my slender judgment can attain to it.
…
Having found a good haven and being brought safely in sight of land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries of it, again to set their feet upon the firm and stable earth, their proper element. And no marvel that they were thus joyful, when the wise Seneca was so affected with sailing a few miles on the coast of his own Italy, that he affirmed he had rather taken twenty years to make his way by land, than to go by sea to any place in however short a time,—so tedious and dreadful it was to him.
But here I cannot but make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poor people’s present condition; and so I think will the reader, too, when he considers it well. Having thus passed the vast ocean, and that sea of troubles before while they were making their preparations, they now had no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain and refresh their weather-beaten bodies, nor houses—much less towns—to repair to.
It is recorded in scripture (Acts. xxviii) as a mercy to the apostle and his shipwrecked crew, that the barbarians showed them no small kindness in refreshing them; but these savage barbarians when they met with them (as will appear) were readier to fill their sides full of arrows than otherwise! As for the season, it was winter, and those who have experienced the winters of the country know them to be sharp and severe, and subject to fierce storms, when it is dangerous to travel to known places,—much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men; and what multitude there might be of them they knew not! Neither could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah, to view from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to the Heavens!) they could gain little solace from any outward objects. Summer being done, all things turned upon them a weather-beaten face; and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, presented a wild and savage view.
Do it together
1. Ask Hannah what kind of writing comes to mind at the words American literature, and then why a governor's record of a colony might belong on the list anyway.
2. Point to the words Say:
in a plain style and with singular regard to the truth.
Ask Hannah what a plain style leaves out, and what a reader gains when a writer promises the truth before beginning.3. Ask Hannah whose words these are, Bradford's or Paget's, and why a careful writer says Say:
in Paget's modern English
when quoting them.4. Then go on to the activity together, with a pencil ready for the bracketing.
Activity
Together: Find the main clause. You read the landing paragraphs aloud, slowly. Hannah brackets the main clause of the sentence that begins Say: Having found a good haven
and underlines each clause added to it. Then, in a column on paper, Hannah lists every hardship Bradford names in the two paragraphs after Say: But here I cannot but make a pause.
Talk it over: why does Bradford stop the story here, and whom does Bradford ask to stop too? Finish with one question: what does the Bible give Bradford that a plain list of hardships would not?
For next time: Hannah reads chapter 10 of Book 1 of *Of Plymouth Plantation* and the start of chapter 1 of Book 2, as far as the choosing of John Carver as governor (about 15 minutes).
For the parent, about this unit's reading: Bradford tells of the first winter, when half the company died, of a sailor's death that Bradford reads as God's judgment, of a skirmish with arrows and muskets in which no one is hit, of the English finding Native graves and taking stored corn at Cape Cod, of a night raid on a Native leader's house in which three men are wounded and then cared for, of Squanto's kidnapping to be sold as a slave, and of a plague that killed thousands of Native people. A letter Bradford copies in (Captain Dermer's) tells of an Englishman who killed Native people invited aboard an English ship, of shipwrecked French sailors killed or kept as captives, and of Dermer's own men killed. Bradford's words for the Native people are the words of that time and that writer's view, which the lessons read as Bradford's and gloss: "savages" and "barbarians" (meaning wild and uncivilized), "wild men," and "Indians," the old European name for the Native peoples of America. Bradstreet's poem is the loss of a home by fire; no one is hurt. Edwards's sermon describes hell and God's wrath vividly, in some places with blood, such as God treading sinners underfoot, and it speaks to the young in the congregation too; it is read as what Edwards and the congregation believed. Wheatley was enslaved; the letter and attestation printed in Wheatley's book call the poet "a young Negro Girl" and "an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa" and name the man who held Wheatley in slavery, and the poem uses the period's word "Negroes" (then the ordinary word for people of African descent) and the old claim about Cain, which the lesson explains. Faith runs through every work and is read as the writers' own, never as the family's. Nothing sexual in any work read.
Tip If the long sentences slow Hannah down, cover everything but the main clause with a finger, read it alone, and then uncover one added part at a time. If Hannah moves quickly, ask what the colonists' Native neighbors might have written about the same landing, and why no such account survives in writing.
On paper
Worksheet
The Landing
The worksheet, as it prints
American Literature · Worksheet
The Landing
Answer each question in complete sentences, quoting the history where it asks.
Name: Hannah
Score: ____ / 7
1. Why does this course begin American literature with writing that was not meant as literature?
2. Copy the words in which Bradford says how he will write.
3. Whose words are the ones printed here, and why does that matter when you quote them?
4. What is the main clause of the sentence that begins "Having found a good haven"?
5. Name three things the people did not have when they landed, in Bradford's words.
6. Bradford measures the landing by two places in the Bible. Name one and say what the comparison adds.
7. What would happen to the chapter if Bradford had told the landing in one plain sentence and gone straight on? Answer in a paragraph of four to six sentences.
This took Arbor about a minute
Your child’s year, written like this
Hannah isn’t real. Arbor writes these for your kid: their name, what they love, and where they actually are in each subject.