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How did 19th-century Puritans treat literature?
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In the 19th century, the influence of Puritan literature was observed in the works of writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, who incorporated Puritan themes into his writings. However, the Puritans themselves, whose literature was primarily didactic and religious, had a negative response to the popular, often risqué, novels of the time. They preferred factual accounts, diaries, and sermons, which reflected their ideals, over the sensationalism of popular fiction.
This question is interesting because Puritans and Puritan literature actually had their heyday during the seventeenth-century. By the nineteenth-century, American literature had transformed into something very different from the Puritan writing of the seventeenth-century, but Puritan influences are still observable in the works that emerged from the writers of the nineteenth, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson.
When Puritans were writing back in the seventeenth-century, the work they produced had a didactic quality, which means that the writing was intended to teach readers a moral lesson. The didactic messages often concerned religious propriety and moral codes of living that Puritans lived by at this time in America.
As well, Puritan writers did not write with the intention of entertaining their readers, which is why frivolous stories and novels do not exist from this time period. First person accounts of religious experiences and poems reflecting themes like predestination and the story of...
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God, however, do exist.
By the nineteenth-century, Puritan treatment of literature interested transcendentalist writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose parents lived by Puritan values. Emerson himself was a pastor of the Unitarian Church, and like Puritans, Emerson believed in God's perfection. For example, through his writing about nature, Emerson discusses the omnipresence of God and the importance of God's moral law. Though Emerson incorporates Puritan themes into his writing, Emerson cannot be called a Puritan writer; he draws inspiration from many of the same religious sources as his Puritan ancestors and treats his writings about God and morality with similar respect, but his style reflects his own time, rather than that of the seventeenth-century.
Since the Puritans were a cast-off sect of Christianity, they often held common feelings of inferiority. Because of these beliefs, their literature tended towards the overtly religious and biographical.
The 19th century in particular was a time of great innovation. The novel had become the major art form in literature, and since many popular authors were quite risque for the time, the Puritan response was generally negative. Puritan communities often considered the fictional story vulgar compared to factual accounts, diaries, and sermons, all of which reflected Puritan ideals. It is a common misconception that Puritan beliefs were "prudish" or excessively strict since they, as with other farming cultures, were very pragmatic about issues of sex and gender. Instead, the misconception comes from their very practical attitudes towards writing down facts instead of fictional stories; since everyone in the 19th century was "prudish" by today's standards, their factual and religious writings were more dry and devoid of sensationalism, unlike popular writing, which was intended to sell rather than inform.