I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving Break. With this week, we enter the last weeks of the class, and we again step back in time and we move south to the colonialization of Virginia. This week, you'll be reading excepts from a diary of a Virginia Planter/Founder of Richmond (1709-1712), a description of Virginia (1649), a letter home from Virginia from an indentured servant (1623), and a ballad from a felon transported to the Virginia colony.
You will be writing a short essay in which you compare the life described by the early colonists to that described by the planter in 1711, and in your committee discussion, you'll be exploring the reasons you might become a planter on a new world. Finally, you will begin prewriting and taking notes for an essay in which you detail what you have learned in this semester's work in Early American literature.
In this week's reading, I think you'll be surprised at finding the Falls of Richmond the edge of the known, British world and amazed as you read one of the first published descriptions of plans for a British expedition to the South and West of the falls. Hopefully, over the course of the week, you'll gain some insight into the minds of those who colonized Virginia from Britain and the kind of colony you might expect to find along the James River 40, 65, and 100 years into Virginia's settlement by the British.
In all your reading and thinking, remember that while the British thought of this as a Virgin Land and a wild frontier, this land was already long settled, farmed, and inhabited by those who would be displaced by the British.
As always, write with comments.
Steve
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