Washington Irving - An American in Europe

As I approach many of these eighteenth century and early nineteenth century texts on my list, I often don't know what to expect. Is this going to be dry? Is it going to be entertaining? Will I wonder why I had to read it, when I'm done, or will its uniqueness and significance jump out at me? With so many of these texts, all I know about them, before going into them, is that they're part of the American "canon" and I have to be familiar with them if I'm specializing in American literature. What I'm trying to say, in a professional and tactful way, is that sometimes I have no idea whether I'll actually like the next book I'm reading. So, reading selections from Washington Irving's The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., published in 1819, was delightful, both because he's a humorous, pleasant writer, and because so many provocative comments about British relations with America (officially only an independent country for about 40 years, when this book was published) jumped out at me.

The Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Narrated by Herself

I will only briefly touch on my month and a half, unplanned blog hiatus to say that I was very busy with my coursework! Now that my last graduate courses EVER are over, I'm finally able to focus on my comps reading. Since finishing my final course paper last Tuesday (August 6), I've finished 3 books that I'll be creating posts for very soon. I'd like to start with The Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.

The captivity narrative was a popular one in eighteenth century Puritan literature. The general trope of such a narrative (always purported to be factual) is that a tribe of native Americans descends upon a poor, unsuspecting Christian settlement, pillages and kills many innocent European settlers, and takes some captives. The captive European settler is eventually returned to colonial civilisation at the end of the narrative, and the narrative he/she produces is told in the first person, as documentation of his or her personal experiences during this harrowing experience. I'd like to start by saying that I don't mean to suggest, at any point, that the experience of being captured/kidnapped and separated from your family is NOT traumatic. While the rhetoric in these captivity narratives of "the savage barbarians attacked our settlement and we did NOTHING WRONG!" is a little tiresome, the individual experience of Mary Rowlandson, who was captured and separated from her children would certainly be terrifying.