SOURCE: "'Then Have I … Said with David': Anne Bradstreet's Andover Manuscript Poems and the Influence of the Psalm Tradition," in Early American Literature, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1989, pp. 52–69.

In the following essay, Doriani discusses Bradstreet's use of the poetic conventions of the Biblical Psalms.

"What we need to realize now," said Robert Daly in 1978 [in God's Altar: The World and the Flesh in Puritan Poetry], "is that … Puritan orthodoxy was conductive to the production of poetry, and that Bradstreet's poetry is illuminated by an understanding of the theology which structured the experiences her poetry expressed." Daly argued that Bradstreet remained faithful to her tradition in that she celebrated the sensible world while consistently ascending to a celebration of its Creator through her contemplations of the world. But Bradstreet's orthodoxy, as it emerges in her devotional poetry, goes even beyond her attitude toward the world and poetic uses of it. What...