Anne Bradstreet's Blog

Most poets use their suffering to create their poetry. For example, a traveler poet may focus more on the scenery tell us how beautiful the world is. Other poets may fail with their business and talk more about their own life, expressing the difficulties. This blog will talk about the life of Anne Bradstreet, and analysis how her life affects her poems.

First of all, Anne Bradstreet was a British woman. She was born in a period that women did not have so much education. However, Anne Bradstreet was lucky enough to get education from her father. Anne Bradstreet was also very interested in seeking all kinds of knowledge. It was the beginning of Anne Bradstreet becoming a poet.

(http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/16071783/lit/bradstre.htm)

In Anne Bradstreet’s poems, she had two important themes of the poem, the religion and the family. For the religion part, Anne Bradstreet was a Puritan. It was a very special period when Britain’s church separated from The Roman Catholic Church to form a new kind of religion. There was a group called puritan. The queen Elizabeth I announced them as a symbol of independence of religion, but things changed very soon. Puritans wanted to have the right for their honor of god. It was a conflict with queen. As a result, they had to leave Britain to keep their pure way to honor the god. The New World is a good choice for them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan).

Anne Bradstreet moved to The New World as a puritan’s wife to escape from the British Queen’s punishment. “In 1629, her father and husband had joined a group of very successful men, whose goal was to protect Puritan values from people like the Bishop of Laud and establish their own society in a new land.”

(http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/16071783/lit/bradstre.htm)

In America, Anne Bradstreet keeps on the puritan way to honor the god which is much more pure without intervening from the king or other people. She shared a lot of fresh ideas in her poem, which is a new unscrambled idea of the bible.

The other part of Anne Bradstreet’s poems is family. “She wrote a lot for her family. She married Simon Bradstreet when she was 16 and they both sailed with her family to America in 1630.” (http://ezinearticles.com/?Anne-Bradstreet,-To-My-Dear-and-Loving-Husband,-A-Discussion&id=21167)

The subject of Anne Bradstreet's love poem is her professed love for her husband. As a women’s side, Anne Bradstreet wants to have a life that has happiness like fairy tales just like any woman’s dreams. She loved her husband, and she loved her 8 children too. She has a lot of poems about her family. The people she loved a lot become her source of poems. She showed all of her love in her poems. Her poems are more likely to be a diary of her mind. She never thought her poems will be published

The conflict with Europeans and Native Americans

    There was a lot difference between Native Americans and Europeans. The ways they lived and the thing they were familiar with were all challenged by the huge conflicts between them. This blog will talk about John Smith’s advance in new world, and some other changes that were caused by these conflicts. How were the Native Americans’ lives changed by Europeans? Why that is important for oral literature can be known by the whole world? What were the purposes that European advanced to new world, and what they wanted?

In John Smith’s traveling in new world, he suffered a lot. With the settlement of Jamestown, he had his own colony. He also found out a different way to deal with native peoples. Unlike most Europeans killing, Smith focused more on how to deal with national people in a peaceful way. He tried to be a friend to national people, and tried to give some help to those national peoples. He even stayed with national peoples for a long time, and suffered a lot of terrible things, but he also learned a lot about national culture of Indians. Smith was really scared with those national people’s welcome. (61-64)

Like most who advanced to the new world, Smith had the same dream and desire for gold or other things which could make him have a nice life. He suffered an extremely difficult period after he landed on new world. He was lacking supplies, and he missed the time to plant agriculture items. He could not keep his men from stealing food from national peoples (57, 58).

It is not so strange that Europeans would force those national people to leave their land because the Spanish and British’s kings were so willing to get the gold from new world. Some of them even gave the power and freedom to the explorers who brought back slaves and gold. In order to take the position of Ocean Lord, Britain even forced prisoners and pirates to defeat the Spanish Navy

(http://www.britishbattles.com/spanish-war/spanish-armada.htm).

However, the change that Europeans brought to the Americans when they invaded was culture. It is really hard to say how much change that Europeans brought after they landed on new world. One of these is that some native people began to recognize that they were not the only humans living in the world, and there was a much more developed world. Some young people voyaged to the Atlantic Ocean to other European Countries, and they brought new ideas and new knowledge back to their tribes. There were many disputes with different values between Europeans and Native Americans such as money and natural balance. Later, those natives would be forced to other place, which is known as the Trails of the Tribe. (http://www.mce.k12tn.net/indians/blueprint/conflict2.htm).

With the Europeans living far away from their homes, they began to live much more peacefully with natives. Native people began to move to colonies so that they could trade with European people. Indians tradition stories were told to Europeans. The Europeans used words to record these legends which were recorded only by memory for a long time before the Europeans came. These legends written on paper were able to be known by people in all worlds (http://www.indianlegend.com/).

Self Intro

Hi:

   This is Chenyi Zhang's blog for EH201.In fact, I love to read books especially in Chinese, I am so sorry that I still have some problem to read complicated english literature. However, I will never stop trying reading.