Anne Bradstreet

Her poetry presents the conflict inherent in balancing a secular, family-oriented life with a strict spiritual life

What inherent conflict does Anne Bradstreet's poetry present regarding life in a Puritan colony?

She was a public figure, a leader in her congregation, and eventually the wife of the governor.

What public roles did Anne Bradstreet hold within her small Boston community?

As a mother and grandmother, she had to reconcile Holy Writ with her intense human love and fear for her family.

What personal maternal roles forced Bradstreet to reconcile Holy Writ with human emotion?

Her verse is influenced by non-Puritan English literature, Renaissance verse, and the alluring and dangerous heritage of the Western imagination.

What non-Puritan literary influences can be heard in Bradstreet's verse?

It represents the public poet who speaks formally and precisely as she ought to speak

According to the lecture notes, what does the persona of “Mistress Bradstreet” represent?

it represents the private woman who loves, grieves, fears, and experiences a raw range of human emotions.

According to the lecture notes, what does the persona of “Anne” represent?

She uses an extended metaphor comparing her book to an "ill-formed offspring" of her feeble brain.

What extended metaphor does Bradstreet use to describe her book in “The Author to Her Book”?

It was snatched from her side by well-meaning but unwise friends who published it with all its errors uncorrected.

How did Bradstreet’s manuscript print edition come to be exposed to public view in “The Author to Her Book”?

Her deceased grandchildren Elizabeth Bradstreet and Simon Bradstreet are the subjects of her elegies.

Which of Bradstreet's grandchildren are specifically named in her elegies?

The title of the elegy is “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet”.

What is the title of the elegy Bradstreet wrote for her deceased granddaughter?

The title of the elegy is “On My Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet”.

What is the title of the elegy Bradstreet wrote for her deceased grandson?

She states that all things within this fading world have an end and that adversity always accompanies our joys.

What universal truth about the physical world does Bradstreet open with in “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”?

She declares that no human ties or friendships are strong enough to escape death's inevitable parting blow.

How does Bradstreet describe the inevitability of mortality in “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”?

She claims that singing of wars, captains, kings, cities, and commonwealths are subjects too superior for her pen

What grand subjects does Bradstreet claim are too superior for her "mean pen" in “The Prologue”?

She leaves those subjects to them so that her own obscure lines will not diminish the worth of their grand topics

Why does Bradstreet choose to leave grand historical topics to traditional male poets and historians in “The Prologue”?