Part One: Early American Literature (1620-1770) Chapter 1: The Seventeenth Century Literature (also called the colonial literature) 1. American Puritanism: American Puritanism was one of the most enduring shaping influences in American thought and American literature. It has become, to some extent, so much a state of mind, rather than a set of tenets, so much a part of the national cultural atmosphere that the American breathes, that we may state with a degree of safety that, without some
