Bachiller En Educacion

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE PERIOD
Relation to English Literature
The British claimed most of the Atlantic seaboard north of Florida as belonging to Britain soon after Columbus discovered land across the Atlantic Ocean. Henry VII sent John Cabot to chart out the "regions or provinces of the heathen and infidel, whatsoever they may be" as early as 1497. However, circumstances never arose forEngland to make good on her claims until late during Elizabeth's reign. When England finally did establish her first permanent settlement in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia, and a few years later in Massachussets, her primary motives were:
1) the monarchial desire to expand the empire,
2) the people's longing for land to cultivate,
3) treasure andadventure,
4) a nation's desire to be rid of excess populations, such as debtors, prisoners, and unemployed youths,
5) expand commerce through trade, and
6) freedom of religious practice.
The literature produced in the part of America known as the United States did not begin as an independent literature. England bestowed on the earliestsettlers the English language, books, and modes of thought. England had an established literature long before the first permanent settlement across the Atlantic was considered. Shakespeare, for example, had died only four years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.
For nearly two hundred years after the first English settlements in America, the majority of the works read there were written byEnglish authors. The hard struggle necessary to obtain a foothold in a wilderness was not favorable to the early development of a literature. Those who remained in England could not clear away the forest, till the soil, and contend with Indians, but they could write the books and send them across the ocean. The early settlers were for the most part content to allow English authors to do this. Forthese reasons it is unsurprising that early American literature does not match in quality that produced in England during the same period.
When Americans began to write in larger numbers, there was at first close adherence to English models. For a while it seemed as if American literature would be only a feeble imitation of these models. Beginning in the eighteenth century, that started to changeand some colonial writing was considered to have merit in its own right. The literature of England gained something from America as well. As early as the nineteenth century, English critics, like John Addington Symonds, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Edward Dowden, have testified to the power of the democratic element in American literature and willingly admitted that without a study of Cooper, Poe,and Hawthorne no one could give an adequate account of the landmarks of achievement in fiction written in English. French critics too have always admired Poe. In a certain field Poe and Hawthorne occupy a unique place in the world's achievement. Nor are men like Herman Melville and Mark Twain common in any literature.
Some of the reasons why American literature developed along original lines andthus conveyed a message of its own to the world are to be found in the changed environment and the varying problems and ideals of American life. Even more important than the changed ways of earning a living and the difference in climate, animals, and scenery were the struggles leading to the Revolutionary War, the formation and guidance of the Republic, and the Civil War. All these combined togive individuality to American thought and literature.
The Virginia Colony
In 1607 the first permanent English colony within the present limits of the United States was planted at Jamestown in Virginia. The colony was founded for commercial reasons by the London Company, an organization formed to secure profits from colonization. The colonists and the company that furnished their ship and outfit...