AP English midterm

Anne Bradstreet Background

One of the premiered poets of the new World and the first published female poets in England and America, is an icon of Puritan poetry

Anne Bradstreet notable poems

-To My Dear and Loving Husband

-A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Public employment

-The Author to Her Book

Meaning behind Anne Bradstreet's poems

-Bradstreet's poetry generally emphasized her devotion to her husband and a variety of Puritan theological tenets. Her volume of poetry The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America was widely successful in both England and America.

-Her poetry regularly depicts her personal and authentic struggle to work out the contradictions in her faith, which makes her one of the most human and genuine poets of her time.

Sinner's in the Hands of an Angry God

-kicked off the first Great Awakening.

-Although it is no longer looked to theologically, it is still considered a fundamental piece of American literature and rhetoric.

-The sermon focuses on the horrific reality of Hell and the very present potential of man falling to Satan if it was not for God's intercession. Edwards uses rhetorical techniques such as allusions, vivid imagery, and repetition to craft his message

Puritan

-Did not want to separate from the Church of England, but did not practice its customs

-Believed that the Church of England need reformation

-Moved to America to escape religious persecution

pilgrim

-Wanted to separate totally from the Church of England

-Believed the Church of England needed greater reform

-Moved to Holland and then America to escape religious persecution

Captivity Narrative

-A genre of literature began being produced as tension with the indigenous people intensified in wars like King Philip's War.

-The genre was called captivity narratives, and they usually detailed a settler's maltreatment after being forcibly captured by a Native American tribe.

-The most notable captivity narrative from this time was A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682)

Calvinist Theology

-TULIP

-Total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints

Total Depravity (TULIP)

Due to Original Sin, man is enslaved to his passions and desires.

Unconditional Election (TULIP)

From the beginning of eternity, God has chosen those who will receive his mercy and be saved.

Limited Atonement (TULIP)

Jesus' death on the cross was enough to atone for everyone's sins, but it was only intended to atone for the elect's sins.

Irresistible Grace

If you are one of God's elect, then you cannot help but accept his grace.

Perseverance of the Saints

A saint is one who is elect. They will remain faithful till death. If they fall away from the faith, then that means they were never really elect

Great Awakening

Religious revival in the American colonies of the eighteenth century during which a number of new Protestant churches were established.

Johnathan Edwards

-A notable preacher and theologian who was a main figure during the Great Awakening (1730-1740's).

-His most notable works include sermons, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and "The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners."

Edwards' sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741) kicked off the first Great Awakening.

-Although it is no longer looked to theologically, it is still considered a fundamental piece of American literature and rhetoric.

Phyllis Wheatley Life

-Nineteen to twenty years old when her poems were published in 1773

-The first American slave, the first person of African descent, and only the third colonial American woman to have her work published

-Born in Africa, most likely in Senegal or Gambia, abducted, enslaved, and brought to Boston in 1761

- She worked in the house of John and Susanna Wheatley and taught to read and write

- The Wheatley's were in a community that challenged slavery on the basis of Christianity

- Granted manumission in the fall of 1773 (being freed by one's owner)

-Married a freedman and they died in poverty, Wheatley being buried in an unmarked grave with the child that died beside her

-Poetry rediscovered in the 1830s by New England Abolitionists

-Her poetry is understood now to display her bold representation of her faith and politics and her belief that slavery could never be compatible with Christian beliefs and American values

Phyllis Wheatley on Christian Hypocrisy

-The slogan "Am I not a. Man and a brother" were chosen is because it put pressure on Christians to remember their

-Christian duty-to love others as yourself. Placing this slave in a praying position and claiming that he is not only a "man" but also a "brother" shows that all slaves are people who are worthy of love.

-Therefore a Christian had a religious obligation to treat Africans with respect and care.

This would mean the end of slavery, which many Christians were opposed to. Douglass and Wheatley would critique and call out all these "Christians" who were proponents of slavery and racism

William Lloyd Garrison

1805-1879. Prominent American abolitionist, journalist and social reformer. Editor of radical abolitionist newspaper "The Liberator", and one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Frederick Douglass

(1817-1895) American abolitionist and writer, he escaped slavery and became a leading African American spokesman and writer. He published his biography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, and founded the abolitionist newspaper, the North Star.

Mark Twain's Dialect

-exploited by white southern writers in the last quarter of 19th century

> "Colored poets of the US may sit down to write dialect without feeling that his first line will put the general reader in a frame of mind which demands that the poem be humorous or pathetic" by James Weldon Johnson in The Book of American Negro Poetry

-Slave narratives

>Beginning of Black speech as a literary language

>Existed only when properly framed within works given status through white voices

-Twain's portrayal of dialects according to himself

>Claims to use a list of specific dialects from certain areas and identities: white and black

>"Pains-takingly done"

-Twain's success according to expertBoth competent and sincere"

>Successful for some he claimed to portray, not for others

eye dialect

A writer's use of deliberately nonstandard spelling either because they do not consider the standard spelling a good reflection of the pronunciation or because they are intending to portray informal or low-status language usage

Dualism

the presumption that mind and body are two distinct entities that interact

Nature vs. Nurture

name for a controversy in which it is debated whether genetics or environment is responsible for driving behavior

Moral Despair

Feelings of hopelessness due to moral expectations.

Irony of Human Condition

showing how people claim morality/intellect but act cruelly, hypocritically, and self-deceptively

Social judgement

Value we place on the feelings of others and our general assumptions about why people work

Social Division

a group that does a certain type of work

Mark Twain's early life

-Born in 1835 the sixth child of John Clemens, a struggling business man turned judge

- Grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, a Mississippi River port town

>Wrote a lot about this place with fondness and his times as a boy here

-Watched his sister and brother die of disease, lived through a cholera epidemic

-1847 father died of pneumonia

>Further debt and economic instability

-Had an enslaved woman as a nursemaid- Jennie

-Saw lots of violence

>discovered a corpse in his fathers office, body of emigrant who had been stabbed

>watched man die after being shot

>watched a friend drown

-Discovered the drowned body of a fugitive slave, Neriam Todd

>Friend's older brother had been taking food to him before he was discovered

- 1848 apprentice for a printer, worked in the newspaper trade

> Able to publish early comical sketches

-As an adult, published in and worked at his brother's newspaper in Keokuk, Iowa

>1857, apprenticed with a steamboat captain, became a captain himself

Mark Twain's authorial life

The Civil War halted the steamboat industry, pushing Samuel Clemens to briefly join the pro-secessionist Marion Rangers before the unit disbanded after two weeks; he later called himself a deserter unsuited for soldiering. He went west to Nevada, where his wartime sympathies remained vague, though his brother supported the Republican Party and Lincoln. Clemens became a reporter known for exposing corruption and adopted the pen name Mark Twain. He gained fame through humorous journalism, then wrote The Gilded Age, a satire of political and financial corruption, followed by Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, which confronted the legacy of slavery through the perspective of a boy raised in a slaveholding culture. Later, Twain worked with Ulysses S. Grant to publish Grant’s memoirs, though he was often dismissed as merely a “funnyman” and at times tried to publish anonymously.

Mark Twain's death

- Lost his wife and became quite cynical and acerbic in his old age

- Built up his reputation as a moralist

- Critical and opinion-based essays on antisemitism, imperialism, lynching, mass murder in the Congo by the Belgians

- Letters from the Earth

> Depicted God as a "bungling scientist and human beings as his failed experiment, that

Christ, not Satan, devised Hell, and that God was ultimately to blame for human suffering,

injustice, and hypocrisy"

- After daughter died, escaped to Bermuda

> 1910 died after having severe chest pains