一

历史背景：

第一批settlers: known as the ancestors of American Indians or Native Americans between 25;000 ----40,000 years ago.

1492, Christopher Columbus arrived America. 接着European immigrants came ---- New World rise

1607,英国人开始在美国定居Jamestown 是他们第一个永久居住的地方。

1620，Mayflower 抵美之后殖民地越来越多

早期的居住者：Separatists and Puritans 为躲避宗教迫害跑到New world

were members of the Church of England who at first wished to reform of “purify” its doctrines .

在John Calvin(1509-1564) Martin Luther(1483-1546)的影响下,无论在英国还是在美国的清教徒insisting that the omnipotent and omniscient God had created Adam in his willfulness had broken God’s covenant .

Calvin的主义：1、original sin and original depravity 2、the original sinfulness of a man s nature couldn t be mitigated .his redemption(偿还) must be a free gift of God s grace . this led the p. to examine their souls.

作为一个Puritan：one had to give sufficient evidence of conversion and then continue to lead a good life.

was originally a movement in England which rose in the 16 century within Church of England, aiming at reform in its doctrines and greater strictness in religious disciplines, and contending that religion should be a matter of personal faith rather than of ritual, with simpler forms of worship instead of those established by tradition and law within the Church of English ,it was more than a religious creed to American Puritans .

1、有宗教情节

2、实用grew more practical as they had to be when

living in the severity of the frontier conditions

Puritans wrote most of the intellectual and economic life of the settlers.

、逃避贫困2、找财富3、逃避宗教压迫。去的人包括：criminals、adventurers landlords slaves

、religious motives 2、Virginia Company promoted the Jamestown colony as the first permanent English settlement in 160,they expect that its plantations would provide goods for British trade and would attract English who needed homes and land .driven by such ambition and hope ,the settlers avariciously fenced and cultivated the hunting grounds of the American Indians . they have to backward

began in the middle of the fifteenth century . 1619 the first African slaves were brought to Jamestown and sold to the plantation owners. 1775,about half a million slaves in the 13colonies in North America.

美国摆脱西方；during 16-17 century Britain launched wars against Spain, Holland and France became to control of the continent.

文学发展：started four centuries ago .it s original because it mirrors the history of America, and epitomizes the development of the political and economic , social and psychological institution.(p7第一段)

a British soldier of fortune. 题目：“A True Relation of