Rhetoric Review Jan 2017

The Pen of Puritan Womanhood: Anne Bradstreet’s Personal Poetry as Catechism on Godly Womanhood

Meridith Styer University of Maryland, College Park

Abstract

Anne Bradstreet’s poems about her family and her life on the frontier rhetorically negotiated a place of stability for the author amid the theology/praxis tension of Puritan life. This article argues that Bradstreet’s poems function rhetorically to define godliness as a public performance of community-sanctioned, gendered action, an inherently Puritan way of understanding life. This definition of godliness allows Bradstreet’s poems to function as a catechism for outlining exactly how a Puritan individual should perform in order to contribute to material stability on the frontier and an assurance of eternal election.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2017-01-02
DOI
10.1080/07350198.2017.1246004
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