2024年6月16日发(作者：)

名词Puritanism

1. The beliefs and practices characteristic of Puritans (most of whom were

Calvinists who wished to purify the Church of England of its Catholic aspects)

2. Strictness and austerity in conduct and religion

重要地位：American Puritanism was one of the most enduring shaping

influences in American thought and American literature. It has become, to

some extent, so much a state of mind, rather than a set of tenets, so much a

part of the national cultural atmosphere that the Americans breathe. Without

some understanding of Puritanism, there can be no real understanding of

American culture and literature.

历史渊源

Puritans was the name given in the 16th century to the more extreme

Protestants（新教徒，基督教徒） within the Church of England who thought the

English Reformation （英国宗教改革）had not gone far enough in reforming the

doctrines and structure of the church. They wanted to purify their national

church by eliminating every shred of Catholic influence. In the 17th century

many Puritans emigrated to the New World, where they sought to found a holy

Commonwealth in New England. Puritanism remained the dominant cultural

force in that area into the 19th century.

Puritans believed that human beings were predestined by God before

they were born. Some were God's chosen people (God's elect 上帝的选

民)while others were predestined to be damned to hell. The success of one's

work or the prosperity in his calling given by God was the sign of being God's

elect. Therefore, everyone must work hard, spend little and invest for more

business. Working hard and living a moral life were their ethics. They regarded

Bible to be the authority of their doctrine. To be able to read the Bible and

understand God's will, education was essential for Puritans.

Puritanism in New England (Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire,

Vermont, Maine and Rhode Island) made a great influence on American

culture. The Puritans hoped to build "a city upon hill"—an ideal community.

New England also established another American tradition—a strain of often

intolerant moralism. The Puritans believed that government should enforce

God's morality. They strictly punished drunks, adulterers, violators of the

Sabbath（安息日） and other religious believers different from themselves. The

American values such as individualism, hard work, and respect of education

owe very much to the Puritan beliefs.

发展与困难

Pushing the frontiers with them as they moved further and further

westward, they became more and more preoccupied with business and profits.

They became more practical. The very severity of the frontier conditions taught

the Americans Puritans to be tougher, to be ever ready for any misfortune and

tragic failures that might lie in wait for them.

All through the nineteenth century and especially in the first few decades

of the twentieth, Americans Puritans came under violent and often virulent

attacks for their religious intolerance and bigotry, for their austerity of taste and

killjoy way of life, for the very heritage they bequeathed to the new nation. But

the fact still remains that Puritanism alone has been the most powerful shaping

factor in the cultural maturity of the American nation. It has burned its way into

the very fabric of American social life, and way down into the American

consciousness, so that even the most incorruptible anti-Puritans cannot

escape its influence.

深入骨髓：对文学的影响

乐观主义

American literature—or Anglo-American literature—is based on the

Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden. The Puritans dreamed of living under a

perfect order and worked with indomitable courage and confident hope toward

building a new Garden of Eden in America. With such a sense of mission, the

Puritans looked even the worst of life in the face with a tremendous amount of

optimism.

Emerson saw the American as Adam himself reborn, standing simple and

sincere before the world. Thoreau portrayed himself as an Adam in his Eden.

Whitman felt rapturous at the sight of the Americans bustling with activity as

the children of Adam restored to their lost paradise. Henry James talked about

the innocence and simplicity of his Americans as so many Newmans. The

spirit of optimism burst out of the pages of so many American authors.

Optimistic Puritan has exerted a great influence on American literature.

American authors have been the outset conditioned by the puritan heritage to

which American authors have been the most communicative heirs.

象征主义

The American Puritan’s metaphorical mode of perception was chiefly

instrumental in calling into being a literary symbolism which is distinctly

American. Puritan doctrine and literary practice contributed to no small extent

to the development of an indigenous symbolism. To the pious Puritan the

physical phenomenal world was nothing but a symbol of God. Physical life was

simultaneously spiritual; every passage of life, en-meshed in the vast context

of God’s plan, possessed a delegated meaning. The world was one of multiple

significance.

Charles Feidelson: “instinct with meaning by reason of God’s concurrence

and susceptible of interpretation by reason of God’s salient act.” Jonathan

Edwards saw nature and even the Bible as “radically figurative”. Emerson’s

Nature is like a “continuous monologue”. With Hawthorne, Melville, Howells

and many others, symbolism as a technique has become a common practice,

it is indeed as it should be. This peculiar mode of perception was an essential

part of their upbringing.

朴素文风

With regard to technique one naturally thinks of the simplicity, which

characterizes the Puritan style of writing. The Puritans have been abhorred for

their austerity and rigidity in matters of taste, “notorious” for their distaste for

the arts and for any manifestation of sensuous beauty. Although there is an

amount of truth in all this, it is perhaps too much a distortion.

As Perry Miller tells us, the Puritans drank and dressed themselves in all

the hues of the rainbow. They build schools, encouraged learning, and loved

reading, making New England and the east seaboard centers of culture

comparable in more ways than one to England and Europe. With regard to

their writing, the style is fresh, simple and direct; the rhetoric is plain and

honest, not without a touch of nobility often traceable to the direct influence of

the Bible. All this has left an indelible imprint on American writing. American

Puritanism has been, by and large, a healthy legacy to the Americans.