Ideas on Anne Bradstreet’s “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666” a. Anne Bradstreet’s poem from personal experience “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666” was published in 1867. a. Anne Bradstreet was awakened in the night to find her house on fire. She not only witnessed her home, but all of her possessions being consumed by the fire. She sadly recounts particular items and the place they once had in the house. However, her tone quickly changes from sadness of things lost to appreciation of what lies ahead. Bradstreet gives glory to God once she refocuses on the heavenly home she will inherit.
Lohit Palle Mondloch-3 October 30, 2012 In Anne Bradstreet's narrative poem, titled "Some Verses on the Burning of our House, 1666," the speaker reflects on the sudden loss of her worldly possessions in a house fire. The experience prompts an inner struggle between her attachment to the material things ant the principles of her Puritan faith, which teaches her to value God and Biblical truths above all else. The poem employs a number of literary and rhetorical devices to convey Bradstreet's belief in the need to disavow materialism and embrace the gifts of the spirit; the poem also conveys the theme that human nature is frail, and that disavowing the material world is therefore difficult. Bradstreet's main purpose is to convey the idea that the material world is shallow and that humans should trust in God for genuine joy and fulfillment. She uses allusions, imagery, and metaphors to relate this lesson.
Bradstreet’s Poem Represents Puritan Literature In Anne Bradstreet’s poem, Upon the Burning of Our House, she is awoken in the middle of the night by shrieks and screams because her house is on fire. In this poem she exemplifies characteristics of Puritan Literature. Bradstreet uses biblical allusions and praises God’s providence. Both of those characteristics are two of the various Puritan literature uses. However within Bradstreet’s poem also strays away from typical Puritan literature characteristics.
“Verses Upon the Burning of Our House” The speaker in Anne Bradstreet’s poem “Verses Upon the Burning of Our House” is grappling with a Puritan issue of spirituality. She develops the internal struggle between one’s love of earthly concerns and one’s faithfulness to God. Her use of various descriptive terms allows the reader to visualize the physical burning and the meaning of the speaker’s house both in Heaven and on earth. At the beginning of the poem the “thund’ring noise / [a]nd [the] piteous shrieks of [a] dreadful voice” wakes the speaker from a peaceful sleep (Bradstreet 3-4). This indicates that the speaker was not expecting such a horrid, shocking awakening during her slumber because Puritans believe that one should always be attentive and vigilant.
In Paradise Lost, John Milton dramatically changes Eve's character from the well-established Renaissance stereotype to an intelligent, humble, and majestic woman. Traditionally, Eve has been condemned for causing mankind's sinful state. Yet Milton rejects such damning views and praises Eve as a heroic individual who defines the Christian doctrines of grace and redemption. In doing so, Milton puts Eve in direct opposition to the only other female in the epic poem, Sin. In this thesis, I propose that Eve and Sin have a distinct relationship: Sin represents the stale stereotypes of the prelapsarian Eve that Milton has rejected.
The Puritans seek to purify and reform the Church of England, making it less like the Roman Church, because they see their values as the only acceptable way of life. Puritanical values include the revocation of worldly possessions, devotion to their faith, and never ending love. To begin with, the Puritans practiced the revocation of worldly possessions in a way that consumed their everyday life. In Anne Bradstreet’s poem, Verses upon the Burning of our House, she wrote, “there’s wealth enough, I need no more; Farewell my Pelf, farewell my store. The world no longer let me love, my hope and treasure lies above.” This supports the idea of revocation of worldly possessions because she’s saying goodbye to everything she owns, thinking about the afterlife.
A question raised from this essay that caught me personally, and was also somewhat mentioned in sub context is, why don't these women just let go of their spirituality and all those urges to let the inner artist out to lighten the burden on their already worn and abused shoulders? Simplistic as the answer is intricate, as I mentioned before was that the only thing they had of their own free will and that could not be taken from them (even though they did not know it yet). It was not tangible, but it was still there. No matter how it manifested itself, it was what kept a lot of their hearts beating and souls hopeful, no matter how battered and torn
Therefore, this suggests society has lost confidence and belief in religion. When analysing the poem, it can be understood that Yeats infers that history will repeat itself through the image of a “widening gyre”. The Second Coming was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First Word War. This war was also known as ‘The War to End all Wars’ because it was so terrible that it was hoped that it would be the last. However, the use of “widening gyre” and “tide” highlights a sense of foreboding, suggesting that history will make a reoccurrence and peace will never be restored because society will not learn from its mistakes.
"It is a terrible thing to break up a family," Ruthie offers as an explanation for their flight from civilization; her statement is as well Robinson's articulation of her deviation from the myth of the unencumbered American hero. Her female hero is extremely much entangled with history, ancestry, the inheritances of family and race; she is an individual standing, not alone, but together, with an aunt who is also mother and sister, and with whom she affirms the bonds of family. Critical Analysis Housekeeping is a complex, often amorphous novel about appearance and reality, mutability, and memory and the past. It lends itself to--and has yielded--a variety of critical explications, ranging from Thomas Foster's reading of it as a representation of Julia Kristeva's theory of women's time, to Elizabeth Meese's reconstruction of the novel as Robinson's attempt to explore the creation of an individual
The very first descriptions illustrate her initial animus by describing it as “one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Perkins 41-42). This is significant for it reflects the narrator’s own presence—she is committing an artistic sin during her marriage by having her engaging imagination and her need to compose. Her husband, John, dislikes this, and as a result, the narrator deliberately feels stifled and has to obscure her writing so that her husband will not know. The narrator is characterized as having a nervous state and is overly protected by her