SOURCE: '"No Rhet'ric We Expect': Argumentation in Bradstreet's 'The Prologue'," in Early American Literature, Vol. XVI, No. 1, Spring 1981, pp. 19–26.

Here, Eberwein reevaluates Bradstreet's "Prologue," concluding that, rather than a confession of humility, it is a subtle assertion of the poet's skill and power.

For an acknowledgment of a poet's simple capacities and modest literary goals, Anne Bradstreet's "The Prologue" elicits strangely varied responses—especially in regard to voice and tone. Is the poet humbly submissive or bitterly angry? Is she self-deprecating and self-denigrating, as some readers find, or a prefeminist champion of her sex? Both extremes find textual justification, depending on the weight one accords her admittedly blemished muse or her anticipated parsley wreath. Perhaps, as Elizabeth Wade White [in Anne Bradstreet: "The Tenth Muse," 1971] and Robert Arner [in "The Structure of Anne Bradstreet's Tenth Muse," in Discoveries and Considerations, 1976] have suggested, the poem divides structurally and...