THE IMPACT OF PURITANISM UPON AMERICAN LITERATURE INTHE 17th , 18th AND 19th CENTURIES

Abstract

The study of any period in history cannot be understood without reference to the previous one for it explains the background of the changes that follow. In fact seventeenth century Puritan supremacy cannot be dissociated from its rejection of previous Catholic monopoly over knowledge and power. Early writings of Puritan America could not have been logically other than Puritan in form and content. Selected writers like Winthrop, Bradstreet and Rowlandson were the proponents of Puritan doctrines. However, challenge from European industrial development and intellectual questioning led to some departure from theologically-based explanations to scientific-centered arguments with respect to human existence and the working of the universe. This affected the Puritan values; their survival in the eighteenth century though not completely found advocates like Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin and others in the Age of Reason. Their writings can attest of their conviction and attempts to preserve Puritan faith. This had relatively to be reformed so as to survive in a more sophisticated materialist world through the works of Romantics or Transcendentalists of the nineteenth century like Waldo Emerson.