In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Preface THIS IS a major-figure anthology of American poetry in the colonial and early national periods. It examines the changing patterns of our literature through the work of five poets, each representative of a period in America's cultural development but distinctive as well, speaking in a personal voice on a variety of themes. Discovering Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Timothy Dwight, Philip Freneau, and William Cullen Bryant, the reader will notice changing literary forms, varying personalities, and drastically differing attitudes toward man's place in the universe. Even within the supposedly rigid theology of New England Puritanism , he will find surprisingly different ideas and expressions; a pattern of belief uniting Bradstreet with Taylor and Dwight could hardly be called constrictive. Nor did the republican spirit of the Revolution force Dwight and Freneau to sing in patriotic harmony. The reader will find great differences in the poetic voices introduced here, but will recognize continuities as well in the spiritual searching and literary adventuring of these artistic pilgrims. In choosing the poems to represent each writer, I have tried to illustrate the range of the poet's interests and forms. I have attempted, also, to let these five voices speak for various periods of our cultural history: successive generations of Puritanism, two aspects of neoclassicism, and several approaches to romanticism. Each writer is, in some sense, both typical and transitional. Continuities and changes may readily be studied by comparing poems by different writers confronting shared themes: nature, religion, xi xii Preface human destiny, death, and poetry itself. Believing as I do, however, that these five major poets were all fine writers and made enduring contributions to American literature, I have tried to select and emphasize their best poems, confident that literary value transcends historical considerations. To make the poems useful to college students in colonial literature courses and surveys of American poetry, I have provided introductory essays on each writer, annotation to clarify the poems, and bibliographic suggestions to facilitate further inquiry. The poets are presented chronologically, as are the poems, which I have arranged by order of publication or, in Taylor's case, in probable order of composition. The first date following each poem indicates when the work was written; the second date when it was first published in book form. The texts of the poems follow the most recent scholarly editions, if available, or the best text prepared in the author's lifetime. A brief appendix offers three historically significant poems by three other authors, Michael Wigglesworth, Ebenezer Cook, and Joel Barlow; these expand the reader's sense of the range of early American verse and the variety of its voices. Vast numbers of persons wrote poetry during the more than two hundred years surveyed in this anthology; many achieved a few memorable poems, though few rivaled the five featured here in their total literary achievement. I hope that this anthology will encourage students to read more deeply and widely in American poetry before the nineteenth century and in the prose of William Bradford, Cotton Mather, Samuel Sewall, John Woolman, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Brockden Brown, which provides the literary context in which the poetry can best be understood. There is much to be enjoyed; this book is only an introduction. I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to the English Department of Oakland University for frequent opportunities to teach early American literature and to two people whose help has been particularly valuable in preparing this book: to Marian Wilson for her advice and editorial assistance and to my husband, Robert Eberwein, for his consistent helpfulness. Without them, this book would surely have run "more hobbling than is meet." ...

Share