Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor in Am. Lit. I

I sat in again on Donald Ross's EngL 3005, American Literature and Cultures I, course at the University of Minnesota on Monday, September 29, 2008. The course schedule for that day indicated that Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor would be taught together. Since I also teach both of these Puritan poets near the beginning of my own American Literature to 1865 course, and since they are two of my favorite poets, I thought this would be another good session to attend.

Donald began the session by looking ahead to the recitation sections for that week. The topic would be Jonathan Edwards' Personal Narrative, a "conversion narrative," and his Images of Divine Things. The comment that I found most significant, in terms of connecting various writers together, which is something I continually try to do in my own course, is that "Edwards takes John Winthrop's ideas of Justice and Mercy and turns it into a story." I'd have to go back and check my own notes to see if I bring that point out in my own class. For some reason, I'm not sure if I do, but then again, I don't teach Edwards every year.

(But that is a topic for another post, or two topics for two other posts: (1) allowing students to "vote" on who they want to read, thus letting them become the "anthologizers," and (2) slowly reducing the number of Puritan writers I teach, since, almost to a class, one common comment at the end of the course is that the Puritans are not really all that interesting to read.)

Donald then moved on to Bradstreet and Taylor, and he made the comment that we would be studying "parallel poems" between the two poets. Again, my ears perked up, since this is also the approach I take. However, I normally teach Bradstreet first, over two days, since I also use her poems to introduce various literary terminology (e.g., couplets, stanzas, rhymes, end-rhyme scheme, iambic feet, tetrameter, pentameter, etc.), followed by a day or so of Taylor. I looked forward to which poems Donald would pair together.

The first pair was Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book" and Taylor's "The Preface." The second pair was Bradstreet's "The Flesh and the Spirit" and Taylor's "The Soul and Christ's Reply" (actually, these are two poems). The third pair was done with students pairing up with each other and doing a 4"x6" index-card quiz: Bradstreet's "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" and Taylor's "Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children."

Donald ended the session on two notes. First, he talked about Philip Freneau's "On the Causes of Political ..." as a way to illustrate the short paper that was assigned. Second, he talked about Bradstreet's poem on Queen Elizabeth and likened it to current events about Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.

Interestingly, there were some similarities and some differences between the pairs of poems Donald chose and the pairs of poems I normally teach. First, I pair Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book" with Taylor's "Prologue," since they are both poems about the act of writing poetry. Second, I pair Bradstreet's "Here Follow Some Verses Upon the Burning of Our House" with Taylor's "The Preface," since they are both poems about God both giving and taking away. Third, like Donald, I pair Taylor's "Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children" with Bradstreet's "Before the Birth of One of Her Children," since they are both poems about marriage and rearing children, but I also use other Bradstreet poems here as well, such as "I Had Eight Birds..." and/or one or more of the poems to her husband.

Furthermore, I teach some other poems by each poet, but not in pairs. For example, for Bradstreet, I also teach "The Prologue" and "The Flesh and the Spirit." I sometimes also teach her poems to her parents. And for Taylor, I also teach one of the Meditations, usually #150, I think, "The Joy of Church Fellowship Rightly Attended," and "Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold." I sometimes also teach Taylor's "Huswifery."

In all, a most enlightening reflection, and it was nice to see that Donald and I are not so far apart in the pairs we construct. While I normally teach all of the Bradstreet poems first, and then the all the Taylor poems after, I will rethink this part of the course and perhaps proceed, next time, pair by pair, rather than asking students to recall the Bradstreet poems of Monday or Wednesday when encountering the Taylor poems on Friday.