On The Image Of Wilderness In Anne Bradstreet’s Poems

Anne Bradstreet is a famous female writer in American colonial period. Her poemscenters on her families and she also writes majorly and privately about her experience of God.To the first settlers, the New World is the limitless wilderness. The wilderness which the NewEngland early settlers referred to was a wilderness of the world. It is also the wilderness of themind. In literature, wilderness can mean innocence, truth and beauty. What’s more, it canrepresent hope, freedom and so on. There is a detailed description of the image of wildernessin Anne Bradstreet’s poems.Bradstreet was a devout Puritan poet, all of whose published poetry was based on thereality that was concerned with a personal or religious expression of blessing or mediating. Toher, wilderness was the place of self-expression, blessing and hope. One had to descend intothe desert wastes before one could hope to discover God. In this thesis, the explanation ofwilderness in her poetry divides into three chapters. The first chapter is about the literalmeaning, the geographical wilderness. In the author’s poems she described the beauty of theNew World, and she took nature as womb of renewal. Her works such as “The FourElements”,“The Four Humors”,“The Four Ages of Man” and “The Four Seasons of theYear” were circulated about the colonial wilderness and landscape. The second chapterdiscusses the religious wilderness; Puritans took wilderness as the path from earth to Eden,and they took the hardship in the wilderness as the way of testing their faith. They reformedthe wilderness is not only for themselves but also in the name of God. The third chapterexplores the spiritual wilderness. It refers to wilderness as the source of aspiration, energy andsolace. The poet can express her freely in the wilderness. In the author’s poems, she took thespiritual wilderness as a way of self-expression and what’s more, as a way of improvingoneself.