Anne Bradstreet’s Romantic Precedence

The aim of this study is to highlight the Romantic dimension of Anne Bradstreet’s poetry, especially as epitomized in her little-known, but very significant, long poem “Contemplations.” It begins by tracing some of its strong “echoes” (i.e. textual echoes) of later major Romantic classics, such as Wordsworth’s “Intimations,” Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind,” and Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” and some of the affinities it bears to ideas of major American Romantic and Transcendentalist authors, such as Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman. It then proceeds to discuss some of Bradstreet’s fundamental Romantic tenets in the context of the tenets of the Romantic movement. Since Bradstreet (ca.1612-1672) is primarily known as a Puritan poet, the objective of this study is three-fold: a) to reveal, through comparing her ideas with those of major pillars of the Romantic movement on both sides of the Atlantic, some of the depths and complexities of Bradstreet’s philosophic vision and thought, b) to stress her contribution to Romantic thought, by offering her not only as a romantic predecessor but also as a possible Romantic precursor in the Bloomian sense, and c) to underscore, ultimately, the importance of her overall poetic contribution, which many readers still view as either marginal or minor.