05. The Captivity Narrative

In this lecture, we discuss "The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson" through the lens of genre and style. Rowlandson both conforms to and seems to challenge expectations of the Puritan style narrative, and we make the argument that moments of tension between conformity and challenge are the ones that allow us to appreciate a text in all its complexities.

Thumbnail credit: illustration of Mary Rowlandson from "Our Greater country: Being a Standard History of the United States" (1901) by Henry Davenport Northrop

Text credit:
All works included in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume A: Beginnings to 1820. 10th ed. Edited by Sandra M. Gustafson. W.W. Norton, 2022.

This course was recorded in Spring 2023.