“Clapt in that prison”: Confinement in Anne Bradstreet’s “Of the Four Ages of Man”
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Ann Beebe
Abstract
Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672) was a Puritan. Full stop. And that fact creates an insurmountable barrier for many twenty-first-century readers. What could a seventeenth-century poet who was a life-long Puritan possibly say that would be relevant to someone living today? The answer might surprise you. Because of her religious beliefs, Bradstreet directly ponders topics, like aging and death, without sentimentalism or romanticism. For Bradstreet, and many Puritans, the human body might be viewed as a prison (“this little house of flesh”), and “the highborn soul” is confined by diseases, aches, and woes. How might someone “break the darksome prison”?
The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony are said, hyperbolically, to have had more prisons than public schools, so Anne Bradstreet, daughter of Governor Thomas Dudley and wife of a future governor, Simon Bradstreet, would have been familiar with actual jails and prisons. But in her poetry, especially her quaternion, “Of the Four Ages of Man” (1640s), Bradstreet turns to the imagery of confinement to contemplate the connection between what another poem calls, “The Flesh and the Spirit.” Bradstreet’s deployment of poetry to explore the theme of confinement is ironic in that the genre, as practiced by seventeenth-century poets, was itself constrained by genre-related and metrical conventions. But this contemplation in Bradstreet’s poetry is startlingly relevant to twenty-first-century life. For the reality of mortality has not changed; yet our ability to reflect without flinching on aging and dying has declined. This paper will examine Bradstreet’s use of confinement imagery in “Of the Four Ages of Man” and other works within a historical context of Puritan practices of imprisonment.
Abstract
Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672) was a Puritan. Full stop. And that fact creates an insurmountable barrier for many twenty-first-century readers. What could a seventeenth-century poet who was a life-long Puritan possibly say that would be relevant to someone living today? The answer might surprise you. Because of her religious beliefs, Bradstreet directly ponders topics, like aging and death, without sentimentalism or romanticism. For Bradstreet, and many Puritans, the human body might be viewed as a prison (“this little house of flesh”), and “the highborn soul” is confined by diseases, aches, and woes. How might someone “break the darksome prison”?
The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony are said, hyperbolically, to have had more prisons than public schools, so Anne Bradstreet, daughter of Governor Thomas Dudley and wife of a future governor, Simon Bradstreet, would have been familiar with actual jails and prisons. But in her poetry, especially her quaternion, “Of the Four Ages of Man” (1640s), Bradstreet turns to the imagery of confinement to contemplate the connection between what another poem calls, “The Flesh and the Spirit.” Bradstreet’s deployment of poetry to explore the theme of confinement is ironic in that the genre, as practiced by seventeenth-century poets, was itself constrained by genre-related and metrical conventions. But this contemplation in Bradstreet’s poetry is startlingly relevant to twenty-first-century life. For the reality of mortality has not changed; yet our ability to reflect without flinching on aging and dying has declined. This paper will examine Bradstreet’s use of confinement imagery in “Of the Four Ages of Man” and other works within a historical context of Puritan practices of imprisonment.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Acknowledgments 5
- Table of Contents 7
- Confinement Studies in American Literature 1
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Part I: Confinement Narratives of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender
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Fiction
- “Clapt in that prison”: Confinement in Anne Bradstreet’s “Of the Four Ages of Man” 19
- Masculine Competition and Confinement in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables 35
- Modernist Forms of Freedom and Captivity in Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger and Franz Kafka’s The Castle 49
- Transgressing the Racial Confinement in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain 67
- Counternarratives of Confinement in Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience TM” 87
- When We Make It – Nuyorican Constriction and Dreams of Freedom 109
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Acknowledgments 5
- Table of Contents 7
- Confinement Studies in American Literature 1
-
Part I: Confinement Narratives of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender
-
Fiction
- “Clapt in that prison”: Confinement in Anne Bradstreet’s “Of the Four Ages of Man” 19
- Masculine Competition and Confinement in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables 35
- Modernist Forms of Freedom and Captivity in Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger and Franz Kafka’s The Castle 49
- Transgressing the Racial Confinement in Philip Roth’s The Human Stain 67
- Counternarratives of Confinement in Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience TM” 87
- When We Make It – Nuyorican Constriction and Dreams of Freedom 109
