American Literature May 1973 [antikvár]

Urian Oakes's Elegie on Thomas Shepard and Puritan PoeticsT. G. HAHN University of California, Los Angeles["N A RECENT ESSAY, Kcnncth R. Ball attempted to demonstrate the importance of the knowledge of a small part of classical rhetorical theory for the understanding of Edward Taylor's Preparatory Meditatio?is, and in the attempt he has indicated what is a relatively unexplored approach to the appreciation of Puritan literature/ The novelty of this approach lies in the effort to make a connection between the Puritan schoolroom and the "Puritan aesthetic." It has been long recognized, for example, not only that classical authors were available to students at Harvard College during the seventeenth century, but also that they were always included in the School's curriculum.^ Moreover, the commonplace books that survive furnish evidence that students copied and preserved for their own enjoyment many classical figures and allusions. In addition to the study and analysis of classical authors, it seems that Harvard students were familiar with the English manuals of rhetoric, such as those by Thomas Wilson, Ralph Johnson, and Henry Peacham.^ Despite our knowledge of this aspect of the Puritan tradition, there has been little endeavor to illustrate what might have been the full effect of such a tradition on a work of New England literature. It is this that1 "Rhetoric in Edward Taylor's Preparatory Meditations," Early American Literature, IV (Fall, 1969), 79-88.- See Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), I, 175 and n.i.3 See Morison, Harvard College, I, 125-126, 174. See Josephine K. Piercy, Studies in Literary Types in Seventeenth Century America (iSoy-iyio) (New Haven, Conn., 1939), p. 245; also Morison, Harvard College, I, 295, and 174-177; Thomas Goddard Wright, Literary Culture in Early New England, 1620-1730 (New Haven, Conn., 1920), p. 31; and finally. Porter G. Pcrrin, "Possible Sources of Technologia at Early Harvard," New England Quarterly, VII (Dec., 1934), 718-724. Records of eariy New England bookselling and libraries, and studies of the early collections at Harvard furnish additional evidence; see, for example, George Emery Littlefield, Early Boston Booksellers, 1642lyii (Boston, 1900); Franklin B. Dexter, "Early Private Libraries in New England," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian society, NS, XVIII (1907), 135-147; and Arthur O. Norton, "Harvard Text-Books and Reference Books of the Seventeenth Century," Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXVIII (1930-1933), 361-438.