- On Mondays and Fridays we'll have silent reading time in class. Check out a book from the IMC or bring one from home that you'll read during this time.
Puritanism and Rationalism
(Add to notes from yesterday)
- Assign values to Puritans and Rationalists based on American Values list.
- Marginalized groups: Who else is present and does not share the views of the Puritans or Rationalists? How do the groups interact?
- Both her father and husband were governors of Massachusetts.
- Her poetry was published without her knowledge.
- Bradstreet uses inversion as a poetic technique to accommodate the demands of meter and rhyme. In an inversion the words of a sentence or phrase are wrenched out of normal English syntax or word order. For example:
Inverted structure: In silent night when rest I took
Uninverted structure: In silent night when I took rest
Inverted structure: For sorrow near I did not look
Uninverted structure: I did not look near for sorrow
Find and uninvert five more lines (not lines 1-2).
- Some readers have felt that by so lovingly enumerating her losses, Bradstreet is crying out to heaven in a way that unconsciously reveals more attachment to her earthly possessions than she would admit to. On the other hand, what Bradstreet does not reveal in this poem is significant: Hundreds of books, as well as her papers and all her unpublished poems, were also lost in the fire. Using specific examples from the text, explain why you are, or are not, convinced that the speaker means what she says.
- Think about the major Puritan beliefs as you re-read this poem. What philosophical beliefs about God and the purpose of human life are reflected in Bradstreet’s poem?
No comments:
Post a Comment