Winthrop, John. (1588 - 1649).
L i f e
- a leader in the Puritan colonial life, the 1st governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, re-elected twelve times
- father of John Winthrop Jr, later the governor of Connectitut
- president of the heresy trial expelling Anne Hutchinson from the community
W o r k
“A Model of Christian Charity” (1630):
- also known as "City upon a Hill"
- a sermon delivered on the board of Arbella bound to New England
- sets the standards of life
- argues that the rich are bound in a holy duty to support the poor
- claims democracy is against the Biblical Ten Commandments x praises "mixed aristocracy"
- claims the Puritan emigrants are in a special pact with God to create a holy community in the New World
> a forerunner to the American concept of exceptionalism
The History of New England [= Journal] (1649):
- accounts the achievements and failures of the ‘citty upon the hill’
- covers the religious and political events of the period of 1630s to 1640s
- mentions Mistress Anne Hutchinson (= a self-appointed minister of a separatist church) as the centre of a theological controversy
> Hutchinson = the major source for N. Hawthorne’s Hester in The Scarlet Letter
Quote
"For we must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world".
From "A Model of Christian Charity" (1630).
Basics
(Painting: Charles Osgood. 1834. Source: Wikimedia Commons).
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Author
John Winthrop. (1588 - 1649). American colonist. -
Work
Politician. Governor. -
Genres
Sermon. Journal.
Literature
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.
Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States. London: Penguin, 1991.
Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1994.
McQuade, Donald, gen.ed. The Harper American Literature. New York: Harper & Collins, 1996.
Ruland, Richard, Malcolm Bradbury. Od puritanismu k postmodernismu. Praha: Mladá fronta, 1997.
Vančura, Zdeněk, ed. Slovník spisovatelů: Spojené státy americké. Praha: Odeon, 1979.