Questions: Puritan and Colonial American Literature

Question 1

What does the Puritan 'plain style' aim for?

• A. Elaborate classical allusion to display the writer's learning
• B. Clear, direct language that instructs the reader and serves faith rather than display
• C. Deliberate ambiguity to leave meaning open
• D. Comic exaggeration for entertainment

Answer: (B)

Puritan writers valued plain, direct expression because writing was meant to edify. Bradford describes his own history as written 'in a plain style, with singular regard unto the simple truth in all things.'

Question 2

The New England Puritans rejected poetry and produced no published verse.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Puritans printed the Bay Psalm Book in 1640. Anne Bradstreet's The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America was published in London in 1650. Edward Taylor's poems survived in manuscript and were published in 1939.

Question 3

In 'A Model of Christian Charity' (1630), what does John Winthrop mean when he says the colony 'shall be as a city upon a hill'?

• A. The colony should be built on high ground for defense
• B. The world will watch the community, so its success or failure will serve as an example
• C. The colonists should separate completely from all other nations
• D. The colony will become wealthy through trade

Answer: (B)

Winthrop warns that 'the eyes of all people are upon us.' The phrase, drawn from Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, frames the colony as a public test of a covenant with God.

Question 4

Puritan writers interpreted ordinary events, such as a storm, a fire or a good harvest, in a particular way. Explain that way of reading and give an example from a colonial text.

Model answer: They read events as providences, signs of God's will that carried moral meaning. In 'Verses upon the Burning of Our House,' Bradstreet treats the loss of her home as God's lesson that her true treasure lies in heaven.

Providential reading turns history and personal life into texts to be interpreted. It explains why Bradford's history, Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative (1682) and Bradstreet's poems all search events for divine purpose.