UTOPIAN PROMISE - Annenberg Media

the era. The curriculum materials help fill in the
video’s introduction to early articulations of “the
promised land” by exploring writers who represent
other, diverse traditions, such as Samson Occom (a
Native American Calvinist minister), William
Bradford (a Separatist Puritan), Thomas Morton
(an Anglican protestor of Puritan doctrine), and
many others.
The video, the archive, and the curriculum materials
contextualize the writers of this era by examining
several key stylistic characteristics and religious
doctrines that shape their texts: (1) the role of typology—the
Puritans’ understanding of their lives as
the fulfillment of biblical prophecy on both a communal
and an individual level; (2) the importance of
plain style—a mode of expression characterized by
simplicity, accessibility, and the absence of ornament—in
Puritan and Quaker speech, writing,
clothing, architecture, furniture, and visual arts;
(3) the diversity of Puritan and Quaker attitudes
toward and ways of interacting with Native
Americans; (4) the centrality of the Apocalypse, or
the end of the world as it is prophesied in the Book
of Revelation, to Puritan thought; and (5) the relevance
of weaned affections—the idea that individuals
must learn to wean themselves from earthly
loves and focus only on spiritual matters—as a theological
doctrine.
The archive and curriculum materials suggest
how students might connect the readings in this
unit to those in other units in the series. Students
might ask, for example, Why are the Puritans considered
such an important starting point for
American culture and literature? Why do later writers
such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louise
Erdrich invoke the Puritans in their own work?
How do Rowlandson’s and Penn’s perceptions of
Native Americans compare to Christopher
Columbus’s, Thomas Harriot’s, and John Smith’s
perceptions? How do the Native American perspectives
offered in Unit 1 complicate Puritan and
Quaker understandings of Indian culture? Why
does Winthrop’s metaphor of the “City on a Hill”
resonate so deeply in American culture? How are
the Utopian visions of the writers in Unit 3 adopted,
reformulated, or undermined in the work of writers
presented in later units?
4 UNIT 3, UTOPIAN PROMISE
Student Overview
Unit 3, “The Promised Land,” explores the literatures
and cultures produced by the different
European and Native American groups who inhabited
the eastern shores of North America in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many of the
immigrant groups discussed in this unit—Puritans,
Quakers, Anglicans, and others— arrived in the
“New World” with optimistic plans for creating
model societies that would fulfill God’s will on earth.
Most groups almost immediately encountered challenges
that threatened those plans. The physical difficulties
of living in an unfamiliar land, friction with
other immigrant groups, dissent within their
own communities, and conflicts with Native Americans
complicated and undermined their attempts
to build ideal communities. While groups such as
the Puritans and the Quakers failed to turn their
utopian dreams into realities, their visions, ideals,
and even ideologies have left an indelible mark on
conceptions of American national identity and continue
to influence American literary traditions.
As the video demonstrates, John Winthrop’s “A
Model of Christian Charity,” Mary Rowlandson’s
narrative of her captivity among the Narragansett
Indians, and William Penn’s “Letter to the Lenni
Lenape Indians” all participate in a tradition of
understanding personal and communal experience
as the working of God’s will. From Winthrop’s vision
of the Puritan congregation as “a City on a Hill” to
Rowlandson’s nightmarish account of personal and
communal sin and redemption to Penn’s idealistic
commitment to peace and tolerance in his dealings
with Native Americans, these texts demonstrate a
shared belief in America’s promise, even as they
offer very different perspectives on how that promise
should be realized. The study guide for Unit 3
also explores the diversity of early American visions
of “the promised land” by examining the works of
other writers from the period, such as William
Bradford, Thomas Morton, Anne Bradstreet,
Edward Taylor, Sarah Kemble Knight, John
Woolman, and Samson Occom. The “Core Contexts”
materials offer background on the religious
doctrines, historical events, and stylistic developments
that shaped the literature of this period.
A belief in America’s potential to become an ideal
society unites all of the writers discussed in Unit 3.
Although the texts presented here offer radically