ANNE BRADSTREET

MAJOR WORKS:

• To My Dear Loving Husband
• The Prologue
• The Author to Her Book
• Contemplations
• The Flesh and the Spirit

ABOUT ANNE:

• Anne was educated through her father, not school.
• She wrote poetry for herself
• Her brother in law published it without her knowing
• She was a faithful Puritan
• Her love for husband was very strong

HER FAME:

• Anne became famous when her brother in law took her poems
• He published them in a catalogue where they became well known
• She is most famous for her lyric poetry and religious meditations in prose
• Femininity is also a major idea in her poems.

TIMELINE 1600'S

• Spanish and English we're moving into the America's in the 1600's.
• Puritans settled in Massachusetts around the 1620's
• This was a result of the Mayflower compact.
• English civil war erupts around 1640's with King Charles I's royalists.
• 1672 English slave trade begins with permission of Royal Africa.

INFLUENCE:

• Anne was influenced by the french poet Guillaume du Bartas.
• She also belonged to the Elizabethan literary tradition.
• Her followers include poet John Berryman.
• John Berryman paid a tribute to her in Homage to Mistress Bradstreet.
• This poem incorporates many phrases of her writings.

LINES/PHRASES:

• "Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge,fitter to bruise than polish"
• - Meditations Divine & Moral, Anne Bradstreet
• "If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then surely thee"
• - Poem To My Husband, Anne Bradstreet

INTERPRETATION:

• Anne's poem, To My Dear Loving Husband is very personal.
• She compares her love for him greater than mines of gold.
• She feels that there is nothing on Earth greater than her love for him.
• A personal interpretation is that since she moved and was in a very
• unfamiliar place her attachment to her husband grew stronger.