feb23notes.html
Ben Franklin and Jonathan Edwards: Provincial Biographies
EARLY AC HOMEPAGE | LECTURE NOTES
Introductory Apologies --
This week -- "Old Time" American Studies -- Biography and High Institutional History
Monday -- Biographies -- Paired/Comparative
The two most famous pre-revolutionary/colonial/18thC Americans
Others?? -- Samuel Johnson/Cotton Mather/Ezra Stiles??
-- All well-off dead white guys -- "smarty pants" //
wrote/published lots --> intellectuals --> of the elite..
Most highly educated -- Mostly clergymen -- Most engaged in
promoting education and other cultural good works;
Not working class/ not of a disfavored ethnic or racial minority
or gender or sexual preference;
Articulate/left their own accounts of themselves/not in need of
reconstructing (as a female servant, an AA sailor, a slave, a
domesticated Indian might need to be)
What American history, American intellectual history, American literature and American studies used to be all (or largely) about....
Lots left behind -- and lots already written about them
JEdwards-- 1500 titles since 1900
1981 Reference Guide
Reputational Study/ Nathan Hatch
Works of -- Yale (1954-_) 10 of 30
BFrankilin -- 4000 titles
1988 Reference Guide
Reputational Study /Leo leMay -- Library of America -- J.A. Leo
Le May (1987)
Franklin's essays and Autobiography
Edwards' sermons (esp. The Enfield Sermon/ but also
"Personal Narrative")
Both have had their ups and downs reputationally
Edwards as a hard-hearted Calvinist/Puritan -- Vernon Parrington
Anti-Franklinists -- the consumate hypocrite... middle brow...
Van Wyck Brooks (ACofA)
Franklin of the "Essays To Do Good" -- of the aphorisms
-- of the library building...penny-pinching vegetarian
goody-two-shoes
The plain Quaker --a fraud
The pro-Franklinists who see him as a sophicated, enlightened
man -- a scientist -- a man who could make it in London
scientific circles and the French court at Versailles -- as a
funny guy
His own invention/construction...
BF's care in presenting himself -- His portraiture -- more
likelnesses than any other 18thC American??
In his 20s -- in his 50s (in London) -- in his 60s (in Paris) --
as statesman (1787); Turnbull...
JEdwards -- one image
Miller in a post-Calvinist Xian world often viewed as pretty
hard to take; uncaring about the lost souls of this
world;Pro-Edwards -- Perry Miller on JE as "a lonely
genius" -- took his Calvinism straight, without a
Covenanting crutch...
(His kind of God the kind an atheist might be able to cotton
to...)
1731/JE -- "God is under no obligation to any man: He is sovereign, and hath mercy on whom he will have mercy."
1733/BF -- "God helps those who help themselves"
What's left for us??
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Their writing -- Texts --Public and private
Their lives -- Biography/Personal Happenings/Comings and Goings
Their careers -- livelihoods/professions
Their writing -- Why so much??
Both had audiences expecting them to be writing away
JE-13hrs a day in his study -- clergy expected to be
studious/to have sermons published
Cotton Mather as extreme example ....
Own congregation -- other churches would see best
sermons/delivered twice weekly into print
Fellow ministers in a denonimational feud -- would help with
publication....
BF -- writing for his living from age 14 -- printer and
publisher most of his life -- insatiable need for copy;
Published his own stuff -- wrote for $$ -- and got it twice -- as
writer/publisher
Had Anglo-American reading audience -- wrote humor/wrote
science/wrote verse/....
Early on -- had patrons who exploited his pen for their
purposes... a hired pen...
After 1750 -- made time to write as he pleased -- man of leisure
and cultural pursuits...
Minister's study and printer's shop the two writerly places
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Both had personal needs to write:
JE wrote to understand himself -- to undertsand what was
happening around him;
P/Narrative -- "I made seeking my salvation the main
business of my life."
PMiller -- "The real life of JE was the life of his
mind"
Joseph Hawley and Pheobe Bartlett
"Satan seems to be in a great rage, at this extraordinary breaking forth of the work of God. I hope it is because he knows that he has but a short time."
PBartlett on ministers -- "I love to hear them talk"
BF wrote to inform others -- to improve them /to explain and to
present himself attractively in the doing
The curiosity of a man who believes things will work out -- but
not just for the "saved"
A practical man -- could a vegetarian eat fish? They do....
His reflections at sea --
Compare with Wm. Bradford -- sailor tossed into the sea...
Both lacked a familial listening audience??
Wife/family/relatives???
Both had ambivalent relations with patrons -- Franklin with Keith
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Both had matters to write about -- on the scene stuff...
JE -- The emotionalization of religion in his time -- The
Great Awakening
The impact it was having on pulpit-pew relations; on individuals
(e.g., the un-saved)
The articulation of a God different from even the earlier
covenanted Puritans in His soverignty and righteousness
What with his soul/ what with his congregation/what with the
GA/what a minister's obligation was....
BF -- The cohering of English colonies into a self-conscious unit -- intercolonial links -- almanacs/newspapers/the mails/military preparedness/joint representation in England by agents -- presentation of colonial grievances to Crown/parliament
Both took George Whitefield seriously// both serious about their scientific studies
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Three key differences between JE and BF --
Discernible from respective timelines ...
BF lived a lot longer -- writing longer; started
earlier and still going in his 70s
Their itineraries -- BF -- Boston --> NYC
---> Philadelphia
England -- 1720s/1750s/1760s/1770s -- 10-12 transatlantic
passages
Traveled through colonies -- postmasterly duties -- NFork in
1750s??
France -- 1770s/1780s
An urbanite -- Boston/Phil/London/Paris
http://sln2.fi.edu/franklin/timeline/timeline.html
JEdwards -- Connecticut Valley --east to Boston for a sermon in
1733
Brief stopover in NYC after New Haven
Northampton - 1726-1750
Connecticut
Stockbridge -- Princeton -- http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/states/avhrr/CT_213.n14.96sep30_1810.html
JE -- an interior world --
Their trajectories -- BFranklin to more and more/wider
acclaim... one with Washington...
JEdwards -- dismissed from his church/preeaching to
uncomprehending Indians -- lastly, to young unruly boys
(presidency of Princeton no signal honor; replaced his
son-in-law)
JE's letter to Trustees of College of New Jersey
Their Uses for the "new" American Studies??
Had things to say about class and gender and race..
Had sexual lives -- both married/both fathers/.
Exemplars of kinds of humor
Conclusion --
To discard/exclude male/white/hetero/articulate/educated/institutionally connected/ privileged -- in pursuit of a more comprehensive picture of American culture (that includes women/blacks/gays/inarticulate/common folk) -- is to deny yourself the benefits of working with what we've got --
Wednesday -- Institutional case study in context of mid 18thC imperial relations -- King's College