The Beginning ofAmerican Literature

America has always been a land of beginnings.AfterEuropeans"discovered"Americain the fifteenth

century,themysterious New World became for many people agenuine hope of a new life,an escape from

poverty andpersecution,a chance to start again.We can say that,as a nation,America beginswith that

hope.When,however,doesAmerican literature begin?

American literaturebegins with Amnerican experiences.Long before the first colonistsarrived,before

Christopher Columbus，before the Northmenwho"found"America about the year 1000,Native Americans

lived here. Eachtrilbe's literature was tightly woven into the fabric of daiiy life andreflected the unmistakably

American experienceof lining with the land。Anoiherkind of experience,one filled with fear and excite-

ment,found itsexpression in the reports that Columbus and other explorers sent home in Spain,Frenchand

English.Inaddition,the journals of the people who lived and died in the New England wilderness tell

unforgettable talesof hard and sometimes heartbreaking experiences of those early years.

Experience,then,isthe key to early American literature.The New Worldprovided a great variety of

experiences,andthese experiences deniauded a wide variety of expressions by an even widervariety of early

Americanwriters.These wnters included John Smith,who spent only two-and-a-half year onthe American

continent.Theyincluded Jonathlan Edwards and William Byrd,who thought of themselves asBritish sub-

jects,neversuspecting a revolution that would create a United States of America with aliterature of its own.

AmericanIndians,explorers,Puritan ministers,frontier wives,plantation owners一they are all the creators

of the firstAmerican literature.Vhatdoes"that hope"in the first paragraph refer to?

A.The hope thatAnierica would be discovered.

B.The hope to starta new life.

C.The hope to seethe mysteries of the New World.

D.The hope to findpoverty here.