Here is the synopsis of our sample research paper on Competing Visions of William Bradford and Thomas Morton in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The May-Pole of Merry Mount”. Have the paper e-mailed to you 24/7/365.
Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page paper which examines how Hawthorne’s short story takes on the historical controversy, particularly in terms of the emphasis on the couple’s marriage, which turns the theme from a consideration of the ideal society into a statement of what marriage means and how it changes the people who enter into it. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: TG15_TGmaypol.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
these traditions was the May celebration, which was a fanciful celebration of the coming of summer, an outdoor revelry of sex, food, drink, and of course plenty singing and dancing
around the tree or Maypole. The tree was representative of an ancient spirit of fertility and the English believed that dancing around the maypole would make their people fertile
and society and their rituals would be carried on. However, not everyone in New England welcomed such practices. The most radical Puritan sect, known as the Separatists, had
no use for what they believed to be blatant examples of paganism. This resulted in frequent clashes between the Puritans and the revelers, with the maypole representing the tangible
bone of cultural contention. Early American literature presented several different versions of the May celebration, with the most diametrically opposed views
offered by devout Puritan and New England Governor William Bradford (1590-1657) in his memoir, Of Plymouth Plantation; and Thomas Morton (1579-1647), the devil-make-care New England resident who set up the
maypole in the Wolllaston settlement of Ma-re Mount (or Merry Mount) that is described in New English Canaan, and serves as the setting for Nathaniel Hawthornes 1835 short story, "The
May-Pole of Merry Mount." Bradford took a rather dim view of the festivities and, not surprisingly, of Morton himself. In Of Plymouth Plantation, he lamented, "Morton became
Lord of Misrule, and maintained (as it were) a School of Atheism... They also set up a maypole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women
for their consorts, dancing and frisking together like so many fairies, or furies, rather; and worse practices. As if they had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of the Roman
...