5th meeting: Salem Witch Trials

Tuesday, 16 February: Salem Witch Trials and The Crucible (3rd generation of Puritans)

Readings:

Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World

Arthur Miller, scenes from The Crucible

Student Presentations

Discussion Leader: Shae Turner (Wonders)

Questions: Why do people remember the Salem Witch Trials and nothing else about the Puritans?

film highlights: The Crucible

student presenter: Jeff Derrickson

Discussion Questions for Miller: 1950s context for The Crucible: McCarthy “witch-hunt” for suspected communists, an event for which The Crucible is partly an allegory.

Why is that conflict allegorized as the Puritan witch trials of Salem? How does the play reinforce attitudes toward Puritans? Or what changes?

What attitudes regarding government + religion? Attractions / repulsions of government + religion?

What other panics resemble the Salem witch persecutions? What significance to American culture? (sex scandals in politics? child care persecutions in 80s?)

Why might an audience enjoy the play even without historical context? What elements of tragedy or the gothic? Portraits of women? (often at center of Tragedy)

Discussion Questions for Mather: What relationship between historical events and Miller's play? “Intertextualty” b/w Mather and Miller?

Compare Bradford and Hawthorne on the Maypole of Merry-Mount. Note appearance of Hawthorne’s great-great-grandfather John Hathorne! (Hathorne was a 2^nd generation Puritan whose father accompanied Winthrop on the Arbella.)

review > midterm

last week's class, 2 truths about course

2nd half of class: Robbyn's discussion of poem by Berkeley & Allison on Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative worked

lyric poems can reach across time--compare Bradstreet

a good story like Rowlandson's captivity narrative can reach across time

facts and data don't reach across time!

My opening background on Puritans wasn't bad, but wore everyone out

Conclusion: true enough, just like all history, but so what?

With more time and energy > Puritan generations, utopia

Problem with deep history:

Knowledge is needed, but except for experts, background quickly becomes unnecessarily complicated

Learners need broad but fair themes

But which do you start with?

Do you start with texts, facts? Or emphasize meanings?