1612 - 1672 Some Key Features Of Her Writing Anne Bradstreet 1612 - 1672 Some Key Features Of Her Writing

Early Writing Classical Poetical Devices and Form Iambic pentameter: five iambs per lines. (See "Metrical Forms") Quatrains: four rhyming lines per stanza References and allusions to classical cultures Intentional variation to signify rhetorical effect or emphasis in rhythms: variations on the iamb syntax: a grammatical arrangement of word End rhymes: slant rhymes or imperfect rhymes Extended metaphor and metaphysical conceits In the tradition of English Metaphysical Poets George Herbert ("Love"), Andrew Marvell ("The Mower’s Song") and John Donne ("Death be not proud . . .") A sophisticated use of wit and irony to explore complex spiritual paradoxes Dominant Puritan conceits: Fire and Dust (“Ashes to ashes . . . “).

Subtext Use of traditional poetical devices belies a non-traditional view of the role of women in Puritan society Alternatives to the Bible for sources of authority Literature and mythology Mythic and historic heroines The maternal domestic role The use of irony to allow her to say what she could not otherwise say openly Self-effacing apologies A subdued confidence in her own ability to instruct and to experience life

Early Influences An educated and literary background Themes Audiences European audiences who were reading the experiences of a colonist Self-consciousness about the creation of a divergent literary tradition in the Colonies Themes Dangers of living in the Colonies Challenges of living in Puritan society Audiences Other Puritan women who did not receive her level of education Puritan male audiences who were reading the work of a Puritan woman

Later Influence Authorial Voice: Life Experience Spirituality more plain spoken Expansive symbols and images abandoned Uses the self by example of victory over doubt (crisis of faith) Identifies strongly with the content of her own poems: As a Puritan As a woman As a writer As a Colonist Life Experience Love and Sex Motherhood and infant mortality Loss and disaster Political change Spirituality Crisis and reconciliation of faith Puritan role of "mother" The increasing importance of Puritan life over her "career" as a writer (from feminist to traditionalist)

Other Notable Colonial Women Ann [nee Marbury] Hutchinson (1591–1643) religious dissenter labeled "dangerous" by John Winthrop and others acknowledged retrospectively for a kind of American Colonial feminism thought to be the inspiration for Hester Prynne in Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter authored papers and letters Sarah Kemble Knight (1666 –1727) The Journal of Madam Knight (1825), published by Theodore Dwight. diary of Knight’s 1704-1705 journey, from Massachusetts Bay Colony to Province of New York Lady Deborah [nee Dunch] Moody (1586-1659), a.k.a. Lady Moore first female landowner; only woman colonial settlement founder, of Gravesend, in 1645, in New Netherland, which would later become part of Brooklyn, New York staunchly against baptism of infants (who did not have a choice) Mary [nee White] Rowlandson (c. 1637 –1711) The Sovereignty and Goodness of God made captivity narratives [a form of literary romance] a popular genre