Columbus didn’t “discover” America — he never set foot in North America.
As per Washingtonpost.com, during four separate trips that started with the one in 1492, Columbus landed on various Caribbean islands that are now the Bahamas as well as the island later called Hispaniola. He also explored the Central and South American coasts.
But he didn’t reach North America, which, of course, was already inhabited by Native Americans, and he never thought he had found a new continent.
What we found is that 1492 is the year when Medieval Literary period ends, it was the year that started the Renaissance aka "Early Modern" literary period. But these are periods in British Literary History.
American writing began with the work of English adventurers and colonists in the New World chiefly for the benefit of readers in the mother country. The earliest American literature event that we found was in 1519: Hernan Cortes, First Letter from Mexico to the Spanish Crown.
Puritan or colonial periods are from 1600-1750. The first work published in the Puritan colonies was the Bay Psalm Book (1640), and the whole effort of the divines who wrote furiously to set forth their views—among them Roger Williams and Thomas Hooker—was to defend and promote visions of the religious state.
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