ABSTRACT
English attempts to establish settlements in North America began in the last two decades of the sixteenth century, mainly in the hope of acquiring riches that could be transported to the homeland. The Revolutionary War and Declaration of Independence of the United States of America were obviously momentous political developments, both for the New World and the Old. They also had huge consequences for literary history. Studies of American literature in English tend to treat it as separate from the literatures of Britain, almost as though they were in mutually incomprehensible languages. The English-speaking population of America during the Colonial period was relatively small, and their cultural profile and literary output correspondingly limited. In a tradition of Puritan sermonising that stretches from Reformation England, through early settlers like the Suffolk-born Winthrop, to later figures born in the Colonies such as Pastor Jonathan Edwards, an American rhetoric developed that was both charged with ambition and haunted by responsibility towards God and humanity.
