ASH3002y Reading Assignment
March 10, 1999

Whose Revolution Anyway? The Rhetoric of Revolution
and
Republican Women

We spent all of class on Monday admiring our work, so we'll play catch up on March 10.  Here's the assignment:

Review the March 8 assignment:

From Baym, Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume I:

• J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, "Letter III:  What Is an American" (1782), pp.641-659
• Thomas Paine, From Common Sense [1776]and The Crisis, No. 1 (1777), pp. 691-705.
• Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence (1776) in The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson, pp. 714-719.

Pay close attention to the rhetoric with which Americanness and revolution are described.  Do these authors treat these issues and terms in similar ways?  Or do they take very different approaches?  If you note differences in their rhetoric, how might you explain those differences?

In addition, I'd like you to pay particular attention to the opening sentence of The Declaration of Independence.  How does it fit into the issues and approaches we discussed on March 3?  Then, consider the texts by Paine and Crevecoeur in that context as well.

Then, move on to the following new material:

• the Letters of  John and Abigail Adams  (1774-78), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. 1, pp. 675-691, plus handout.
• Judith Sargent Murray, "On the Equality of the Sexes" (1790), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. 1, pp. 786-795.
• Susanna Rowson, Charlotte:  A Tale of Truth (1791), The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. 1, pp. 850-916.

As you read these texts, consider the way that women's status is represented in them.   What issues concern these authors?  How do the genres in which they're writing and the audiences they envision shape their texts?  How might you relate Rowson's novel to the Abigail Adams's letters and Murray's essay?

Additional reading: (Note that this is a very partial list.)

• Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press, 1980).
• Hannah Foster, The Coquette (available in Oxford and Penguin editions)
• Cathy Davidson, Revolution and the Word:  The Rise of the Novel in America (New York:  Oxford UP, 1986).

Electronic, Web-Based Resources

• For searchable electronic versions of some of the principal revolutionary and constitutional documents, including The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States and The Federalist Papers:
  • The Yale Law School Avalon Project -- http://elsinore.cis.yale.edu/lawweb/lawschool/webtfp.htm
  • Emory Law School Page -- http://www.law.emory.edu/Federal
  • Oklahoma Law School Page -- http://www.law.uoknor.edu/hist/
  • Docments from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention in American Memory -- http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/bdsds/bdsdhome.html
• For an excellent bibliography of published accounts and interpretations of the Revolutionary Era, 1760-1790:  Mighigan State,PBS and OIEAHC --http://revolution.h-net.msu.edu/
• For some maps of the Revolutionary Era, see the University of Georgia's Hargrett Collection:
  http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/revamer.html