a.+Puritan+Writing

= PURITAN WRITING =

When the American Puritan colonies were founded in the mid-seventeenth century, American Puritanism was a minor offshoot of English Protestantism. It grew in cultural importance retrospectively, however, as New England prospered and played a major role in the formation of the United States. American Puritan writing thence became one of the founding literatures of the new nation. The Puritan colonies had been the most literate, organised and economically successful of all the early English-speaking colonies, and their legacy was emphasized by the influential nineteenth-century New England writers, including Emerson, Hawthorne and Longfellow. But as revisionist scholars remind us, the Puritans were only one culture among many which inhabited the "New Land".

**Michael Wigglesworth[[image:wigglesworth_day_of_doom.jpg align="right"]]**
British-American clergyman, physician, and author of rhymed treatises expounding Puritan doctrines. Wigglesworth emigrated to America in 1638 with his family and settled in New Haven. In 1651 he graduated from Harvard College, where he was a tutor and a fellow from 1652 to 1654 and again from 1697 to 1705. He preached at Charlestown, Mass., in 1653–54 and was pastor at Malden from 1656 until his death. In addition to his clerical duties, Wigglesworth practiced medicine and wrote numerous poems, including “A Short Discourse on Eternity,” “Vanity of Vanities,” and //God’s Controversy with New England// (published 1871). The first two were appended to //The Day of Doom: or a Poetical Description of the Great and Last Judgment// (1662), a long poem in ballad measure using horrific imagery to describe the Last Judgment. Intended to edify Puritan readers, this work sold 1,800 copies within a year, an unusually high number in its time. Once the most widely read poet of early New England, Wigglesworth declined in popularity together with Puritanism and has since been considered a writer of doggerel verse. A modern edition of //The Day of Doom// prepared by Kenneth B. Murdock was published in 1929.

The Day of Doom-text

**Johnatan Edwards[[image:Jonathan_Edwards.jpg width="172" height="180" align="right"]]**
(born Oct. 5, 1703, East Windsor, Conn. — died March 22, 1758, Princeton, N.J.) American theologian. The 5th of 11 children in a strict Puritan home, he entered Yale College at age 13. In 1727 he was named a pastor at his grandfather's church in Northampton, Mass. His sermons on "Justification by Faith Alone" gave rise to a revival in the Connecticut River valley in 1734, and in the 1740s he was also influential in the Great Awakening. In 1750 he was dismissed from the Northampton church over a disagreement on who was eligible to take communion, and he became pastor in Stockbridge in 1751. He died of smallpox shortly after accepting the presidency of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). A staunch Calvinist, he emphasized original sin, predestination, and the need for conversion. His most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," vividly evokes the fate of unrepentant sinners in hell.

Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God-text

**Edward Taylor**
one of the foremost poets in colonial British North America. Unwilling to subscribe to the required oath of conformity because of his staunch adherence to Congregational principles, Taylor gave up schoolteaching in England, emigrated to New England, and was immediately admitted as a sophomore by the president of Harvard College, Increase Mather. After his graduation in 1671, he became minister in the frontier village of Westfield, Mass., where he remained until his death. He married twice and became the father of 13 children, most of whom he outlived. Taylor’s 400-page quarto manuscript, //Poetical Works,// was not published by his heirs at Taylor’s request. It came into the possession of Yale University in 1883 by the gift of a descendant, and the best of his verse was published in 1939. The important poems fall into two broad divisions. “God’s Determinations Touching His Elect” is an extended verse sequence thematically setting forth the grace and majesty of God as a drama of sin and redemption. The “Sacramental Meditations,” about 200 in number, were described by Taylor as “Preparatory Meditations Before My Approach to the Lord’s Supper.” Central to all his poems is the typical Metaphysical mode: the extravagant figure of speech and the association of image and idea intended by its tension to strike poetic sparks. //The Poetical Works of// //Edward Taylor// (1939), edited by T.H. Johnson, is a selection of poems, a biographical sketch, critical introduction, and notes. //The Poems// //of Edward Taylor// (1960), edited by Donald E. Stanford, is a comprehensive edition, including the complete text of the “Meditations.”

Edward Taylor-Huswifery-text