Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672)

Annie did include a few personal effects among her poems, but in general she’s not the “romantic” figure of Shakespeare (to say nothing of any Regency or Victorian writers), but is more of a strange and brooding Blake, although she is not like old W.B. a member of the new world, but of the old one. Historians’ niceties aside, I think we see Annie best if we see her as basically a product of the Middle Ages—she’s not a theologian, although she is quite pious, but in this sorta folk sense she is a medieval philosopher in verse. She writes of natural philosophy (medieval science) and medicine and normative developmental psychology and personality types, and traditional Western biographical and dynastic history and British and Boston medieval history and politics and rhymes of royalty. She also writes extensively on biblical themes and her own wisdom sayings, and reflections on nature and family, and death and sickness, and the nature of things. She’s all old-school intellectual and philosopher in verse.

It’s not like I had a huge encounter with Annie but she’s a serious writer and a smart woman and a real intellectual who wasn’t made out of stone, and again a woman in a time when not all girls were taught how to read, and even two hundred years later the guy who wrote the introduction to my digital facsimile edition wasn’t sure if she were a great joke or just great, but, you know.

She’s the philosopher with a rhyme for a forgotten world, you know, so that is something.… (mais)