The Influence of Puritanism on American Literature（清教主义对美国文学的影响）

to steal to eat the forbidden fruit, so men is original sin, must try to redeem themselves. God has supreme power, and decides the fate of the people in advance. The worship of the God and absolute trust makes the early colonial American literature a strong religious color. Enthusiasms on religion inevitably lead to blind suppression of freedom of thought. The reflection of the problem is to performance in the legend of romantic literature represented by Hawthorne novel. The grandparents of Hawthorne are Puritan who is under the influence of New England tradition. He is not a Puritan, the age he lives away from the rule of Puritanism in New England for a century, but the growing materialistic made him rethink some of the basic concept of Puritan. He inherited the Puritan completely the concepts of original sin and stealth, becomes a faithful record of these ideas and positive reviewers, and explores the \as the theme of his works. In his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter, he used symbolism to expose the character of the psychological and idea deep in the soul of the struggle between good and evil. Not just him, each author's works are influenced by Puritanism, that is not only truly reflects the Puritan view of life, but also criticized the inhibition of Puritanism.

This period has actually started the Renaissance in the United States, the American literary activities for the first time - the Transcendentalist. Transcendentalist stressed intuition, believe that people can perceive the external world through perception and intuition, to achieve harmonious unification between God and the natural. It emphasizes individualism is the most important element in society; the ideal state is man of self-reliance. Transcendentalist abandoned the religious factors

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on surface, but essentially retained the Puritan marked characteristics, moral integrity, the harmony between people, nature, and God is everywhere, thrifty life attitude, etc. As a moral guide, transcendentalists essentially tend to call on people to abandon the old customs and traditions and believe personal dignity and value, to create a new kind of their own American literature.

The rule of Puritanism in New England had already become history, but its influence still exists. Americans advocate individualism and emphasizes individual struggle and success, advocating pragmatic style of work, that dates back to the success of original Puritan colonial frontier and Puritanism thoughts about the hard work, efforts to redeem themselves. In early American literature, the early colonial literature religiosity, or the narrative about the Puritan doctrine of original sin in the legend of the romantic literature, or the attention of the transcendentalist literature to strengthen the harmony of man and nature, it is visible to see the moral integrity of Puritanism. Thereafter, whether realism, naturalism, the lost generation, or the modern and contemporary literature, the attention for individual destiny, and the preference for aloof from the group of the hero is characteristic of its different from other countries' literature. This kind of publicity of American characteristics to escape from the stubborn theme still associated with Puritanism. Thus, for the United States, Puritanism is not only a doctrine, but also a cultural atmosphere, that has a deep-seated to the influence of American literature of US. In a sense, Puritanism is what makes the American people and literature has its own characteristics.

Works Cited

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i. ii. WANG Xiao yang, The Influence of Puritanism on American Literature,2001 The Survey of American Literature,2008

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