Speaking, Writing, and Fighting in Early New England
Listen to the lecture “Speaking, Writing, and Fighting in Early New England” in the media player below or directly on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Listen on Spotify or Apple Media.
Transcript of lecture:
Quick links to some sources: Perry Miller’s “An Errand into the Wilderness,” many Puritan sermons (such as the Stoughton, Danforth, etc.) can be found in the Evans Early American Imprint Collection
As a reminder, the learning goals of the lecture are:
…for learners to be able to describe how argumentation and conflict play a role in oral societies
Discussion questions and forum:
- Can you think of any significant writings or set of writings by the Puritans that might challenge the thesis that they were extremely focused on the abstract ideal of forming a new society? (You can refer to other texts in this lecture: Magnalia Christi Americana, the Bay Psalm Book, John Cotton’s catechismetc.). Do you think media was the reason for the relative stability of Puritan society? Why or why not?
- What do you think of Ong’s idea that orality is associated with more overt aggression (as well as overt human connection and bonding)? Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with this quote and why: “Little wonder that social institutions were interpreted in polemic [argumentative] or quasipolemic terms [in oral societies] with an insistence that strikes us as bizarre. Renaissance treatises for educating the courtier, for example, such as Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano or Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Book Named the Governor, are more likely to trace governmental failures deriving as we now know, from complex economic, social, political, and psychological ‘forces,’ to enemies among the king’s advisors—“bad guys.” Book prefaces and dedications, curiously enough, provide an excellent sampling of how man felt his life-world as late as the age immediately following the development of print. Hostility here manifests itself not merely in the excoriation of various persons (often enough including the printer) but also in praising patrons or other dedicatees, for the writer of dedications commonly pictures the dedicatee as surrounded by hosts of enemies from whom the author and his friends gallantly propose to defend him” (Ong 199).
Respond to these discussion questions (or other topics of your choosing, relating to the lectures) here: