Puritan Poetry
Anne Bradstreet
Anne Bradstreet
l First American writer, an ______woman
l While we have writings before Bradstreet, she is the first producer of what we call ______.
l In 1630, Anne journeyed across the Atlantic aboard the ______ to the part of New England around Salem that would become known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Style
l Unlike the ornate “high style” popular in England at the time, the Puritan ______style used simple sentences and common words from everyday speech.
l The plain style contained few or no classical ______, Latin quotations, or elaborate figures of speech.
l The plain style, Puritans felt, was much more effective in revealing God’s truth than the ______style.
l Despite the fact that the style used by Puritan writers now seems hard to read, it was once considered ______and ______in the 1600s.
l Although Anne Bradstreet’s “Upon the Burning of Our House” contains some figurative language, it is a good example of the plain style.
Plain Style vs. Ornate Style
Ornate Style / Plain StyleShabby but beloved, my shoes house my feet as they carry me from place to place. / My shoes are old, brown, kind of worn-out, but comfortable for walking around in.
The pen spills ink-blood as it brings words to life. / The pen is a blue ballpoint with a leaky tip.
Inversion
l “Upon the Burning of Our House” is filled with inversions.
l In an inversion, sentences are ______written in normal word order.
l For example, Bradstreet writes “I wakened was with thund’ring noise” instead of “I was wakened with thund’ring noise.”
l Inversion is often used to make a poem’s ______scheme work out or to maintain a ______.
l Rhyme is the repetition of vowel sounds in accented syllables and succeeding syllables.
Types of rhyme include:
l ______rhyme
l ______rhyme
l ______, or slant, rhyme
Rhyme Scheme
l End rhyme refers to rhyming words at the ______of ______.
l End rhymes usually follow a regular pattern within a poem, called its rhyme scheme.
Rhythm and Meter
l Rhythm is the alternation of ______and ______syllables in language. Rhythm occurs naturally in all forms of spoken and written language.
l Meter is the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.
l One meter commonly used in poetry is iambic meter—an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.