American Literature / Unit 4 AML 0317 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Edward Taylor and the Private Meditations
Captions available
The idea
Edward Taylor emigrated in sixteen sixty-eight rather than swear loyalty to the Church of England, studied three years at Harvard, and served a frontier parish. He wrote Preparatory Meditations and God's Determinations for himself, not for print, and his poems stayed unpublished for two centuries.
In practice
A minister writing poems for no reader.
Where people slip
The work was recovered long after his death.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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