Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 7 - Asserting a National Voice

  • from Part II - A New Nation: Poetry from 1800 to 1900
  • Edited by Alfred Bendixen, Princeton University, New Jersey, Stephen Burt, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of American Poetry
    Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    27 October 2014, pp 155-176

  • Summary

    More than two hundred American Puritans wrote poetry that is still extant. In their worldview, the physical world was itself a book written by God to connect this world with the next, to link the lowly creatures with their creator, because that, which may be known of God, is manifest in them. Standardized prayer was criticized as a papist and Anglican ritual, because any good minister could and should pray in the spirit. The practice of meditation, of making abstract doctrine real and true to human experience through an intense focus, was itself a poetics, away of channeling thought and feeling in language. Anne Bradstreet, Roger Williams, Michael Wigglesworth, Edward Taylor and Jane Colman Turell, wrote poetry, as a part of their religion, an unending struggle to connect transient life and lasting truth, to work out the meanings of life, to connect the natural and supernatural orders.