Puritan Typology

Puritans saw human and social history as a cyclical succession of eras that lead toward a single, glorious design conceived in the mind of God.  They saw historical progress as a repetition of "types," identifying in the Old Testament various foreshadowings of actions and events in the New Testament.  According to this method of historical "Typology," the character of Moses prefigured the appearance of Christ, and Moses' delivery of the Israelites from Egypt prefigured Christ's salvation of humanity.  The  Puritans saw their departure from England and Holland to a new promised land in America as yet another historical manifestation of this history, with themselves being the new Israelites chosen and favored by God.  As you read the selections from Of Plymouth Plantation, pay attention to Bradford's efforts to associate the Plymouth colonists with the Israelites of Scripture.

As you read the selections from Bradford's account of Plymouth Plantation, you need to keep in mind Bradford's intended audience and the historical context of the composition of the history. Of Plymouth Plantation was written after the original settlement had been accomplished by the Mayflower pilgrims ("old comers"), and after their intense suffering and sacrifices had finally brought about security and prosperity for the colony.  Bradford writes not to the old comers but to the second and third generations of colonists whom he believes have strayed away from the original faith, piety, and spiritual fortitude of their parents and grandparents.  In the words of the critic Jesper Rosenmeier, "Bradford's aim [as a historian] is not to portray the past with the fullest possible objectivity but to resurrect a bygone holiness; a holiness that, he knows and never loses sight of, must be resurrected by and in his audience."1  As you read the selections, keep track of passages that seem to reflect Bradford's effort to inspire puritan piety within a generation of spiritualists threatened by prosperity and worldliness.
 

Conscious Craft

Hasty readers may find Bradford's prose to be dry and burdensome, and in fact he deliberately chose to write his history in what was then called the "plain style," in contrast to the deeply elaborate and ornate style of "euphuism."  And yet Bradford's style is anything but plain.  The critic E. F. Bradford first called attention to his use of emphatic couplings to create a variety of sense and description, his use of syntactical balance and antithesis, his use of alliteration, assonance, and consonance.2  The opening paragraph on page 165 provides fine examples:
When as by the travail and diligence of some godly and zealous preachers, and God's blessing on their labors, as in other places of the land so in the North parts, many became enlightened by the Word of God and had their ignorance and sins discovered unto them, and began by his grace to reform their lives and make conscience of their ways; the work of God was no sooner manifest in them but presently they were both scoffed and scorned by the profane multitude; and the ministers urged with the yoke of subscription, or else must be silenced.  And the poor people were so vexed with apparitors and pursuivants and the commissary courts, as truly their affliction was not small.  Which, notwithstanding, they bore sundry years with much patience, till they were occasioned by the continuance and increase of these troubles, and other means which the Lord raised up in those days, to see further into things by the light of the Word of God. . . .
Pay attention not only to what Bradford says, but how he says it.  His elegant prose style is part of what makes Of Plymouth Plantation such a memorable and profound record of early American colonization.

Works Cited

1.  Rosenmeier, Jesper. 'With My Owne Eyes': William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation." Typology and Early American Literature, ed. Sacvan Bercovitch (Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1972), 69-104.

2.  Bradford, E. F. "Conscious Art in Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation." New England Quarterly, 1 (April 1928): 133-157.