Worth and Significance of Colonial Period in American English Literature

Colonial Literature : its worth and significance

However, all these means that there was no literature in the colonial period, or that is the entirely worthless, and that is a waste of time to study it. It is wrong to say that the study of American literature should begin with the 18th century, and the literature of colonial period should be ignored. On the contrary, this early literature is of great worth and significance historically, though it may not be very significant as literature. The early colonists were writing in a new setting and there writing give an account nit only of their hardship and suffering but also of their joy and pride in the greatness and glory of their new environment.

Their accounts of travel, the description of the land, faithful reports of colonial life, throb with pride in what they were doing. They reflect the aspiration and hopes, the trials and the set-bucks of those who were fighting against the wilderness.  It is in these early writing that we find how the nation grew. Colonial American literature depicts the dangerous adventure, the hard work and difficult decisions that went into the process of building a nation. In the pages of these early books, we discover the basic ingredients of the character, courage, industry and optimism. The hardship of living conditions, (the Red) Indian attacks, sickness and starvation, are from the beginning reflected in the pages of smith, Bradford and Winthrop. In despite innumerable dangers, the colonists flourished is a tribute to their courage and tenacity. Their writing, therefore, form an important part of American literary history. Hence it is only sensible that a student of American literary thought should trace it from the very beginning.

The early colonial literature "became a great reservoir of the material and inspiration for the 19th century, for readers it still provides an understanding of those bedrock American experiences which developed the national character and our peculiarly American institution." To understand the American literary tradition, we have to go back to the early colonial literature. This has its relevance even today for the student of American thought and literature.