| Summary: | There is a faint providential and even Utopian strain in the early reports of the first British settlement in the New World. This providential view of the "new founde landys" underlies several abortive attempts to "plant" the island of Newfoundland. To understand the reasons for the failure to "plant" Newfoundland, and with it the failure of the first original poetry in the New World, it is necessary to consider the uneasy combination of providential vision and economic gain which characterized the English attitude to the New World, and especially to Newfoundland between 1497 and 1630.
|
|---|