Historical Background
for American Literature 1750-1830
Time Period Dates and Names:
There is not widespread agreement about the "beginning" and "ending" dates for this time period:
1720-1820
1765-1830
1700-1820
1776-1836
1750-1830 (our text)
There is also not widespread agreement about what to "name" this time period:
Literature of Reason and Revolution
Literature of the American Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment
The Revolutionary and Early National Period
Literature of the New Republic
Literature for a New Nation (our text)
Immigration and Diversity (pp. 315-316):
English settlers -- Congregationalists of Puritan descent in New England; Anglicans (Church of England) and Quakers, primarily in the middle colonies or in the South, and Catholics in Maryland.
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians
People of Dutch descent -- primarily in or near New York City
Immigrants from Germany -- the majority of them in Pennsylvania
Indians -- remnants of the Iroquois Confederation (in western New York and Pennsylvania) and significant numbers of Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw (on the frontiers of Georgia and North Carolina)
Africans
Percentages of approx. 4 million in 1790 (p. 325):
English descent = 48 %
African descent = 19 %
Scots or Scotch-Irish = 12 %
Germans = 10 %
French, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, Swedes = 11 %
"Firsts":
The first novel -- Franklin's edition of Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740-41) in 1744 (?).
The first book of poetry published by an African American (Woman) -- Phillis Wheatley's poems (1773)
The first "bestseller" -- Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776)
The first play written by an American to be performed by a professional acting company in the United States -- Royall Tyler's The Contrast (1787)
The first "bestseller" novel -- Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple (1791)
The first American to earn his living as a professional writer -- Washington Irving
Libraries (p. 326):
Social or Membership Libraries -- est. by specifc groups or organizations
Commercial Circulating Libraries -- charged fees for the loan of books
Genres of Writing:
Newspapers
Magazines
Books
Almanacs
The Bible
Schoolbooks
Annual Gift Books
Diaries
Journals
Autobiography
Spiritual Autobiography
Captivity Narratives
Slave Narratives
What is the "Enlightenment"?
"... some of the fundamental tenets of Enlightenment thought:
that the natural world, human nature, and social institutions are governed by universal laws;
that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain natural rights;
and that governments exist only by the consent of the governed, who are justified in rebelling if their natural rights are violated." (p. 312)
From the editors:
"If universal laws were thought to structure nature, society, and the human capacity to think and act, then humans were essentially equal and deserving of fairness in government, law, and education."
Autobiography:
"One important source of autobiography was the Christian emphasis on self-examination, a characteristic that assumed even greater importance during the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Since for most Protestants the sole promise of salvation was the operation of God's grace within the soul, individuals were encouraged to turn inward to discover signs of their ultimate spiritual destiny" (p. 336).
Writers in the Enlightenment "also emphasized the need for self-examination" (p. 336).
"Franklin turned not inward to the soul but outward to the world of men (which virtually all of the major characters in his narrative are) and events" (p. 336).
"Like many Enlightenment thinkers, who viewed themselves as the 'party of humanity,' Franklin placed less emphasis on salvation or the need to prepare for the next world than on the pursuit of happiness and the need to improve conditions in this world. With his satirical wit, his distaste for religious orthodoxy and social pretense, and his emphasis on reason and tolerance, Franklin displayed an especially strong kinship with Voltaire and other Enlightenment writers in France" (p. 336).
"Franklin's story may be read as a kind of secularized version of The Pilgrim's Progress, which was second only to the Bible among the books read in many homes in colonial America" (p. 337).
"Franklin cast himself as an exemplary figure, at once a distinct individual and a representative American" (p. 337).
John Locke, English Philosopher:
His Treatises of Civil Government strongly shaped the ideas to which Jefferson finally gave such eloquent expression in the Declaration of Independence (p. 322).
Franklin's Autobiography displays the impact of the empirical philosophy of works like Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Affirming the natural goodness of human beings, Locke denied that there were innate ideas. Instead, he argued that the mind was a tabula rasa, a blank slate inscribed by sense experience alone.
Tabula rasa: "the notion that humans enter the world as a 'blank slate' but possess natural reason that enables them to make moral decisions; therefore, some Enlightenment thinkers assumed moral educability of humans" (editors).
David Hume, Scottish Philosopher:
"The skeptical and utilitarian Hume emphasized the limitations of human knowledge, which in his view did not extend beyond what we can observe, and the primary task of which was to provide us with a practical guide to life. A similar understanding of human nature and individual understanding is revealed in the Autobiography, in which Franklin charts his intellectual growth through observation and education, especially his voracious reading" (p. 336).
"Hume's utilitarianism ... explained moral principles as that which promote the greatest utility" (editors).
Alexander Pope, English Poet:
His famous couplet, from Essay on Man:
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.
Deism (p. 329):
The "rational" religion of the Enlightenment that rejected orthodox Christian doctrines such as miracles, revelation, and the divinity of Jesus.
Deists deduced the existence of a supreme being from the construction of the universe itself rather than from the Bible.
"A creation," as one distinguished historian has put it, "presupposes a creator."
A harmonious universe proclaimed the beneficence of God.
The Quakers:
(see Equiano section)
The "Great Awakening" (p. 329):
The fervor generated by the series of religious revivals knows as the Great Awakening of 1720-1750 (see Jonathan Edwards) waned during the second half of the eighteenth century.
Beginning in the 1790s, however, there was a resurgence of evangelical activity known as the 'Second Great Awakening."
The movement was in large part a reaction against Deism.
Political Parties (p. 329):
"The country's first contested presidential election, in which John Adams narrowly defeated Thomas Jefferson."
The Federalists -- John Adams -- favored a strong federal government and advocated the development of industries and trade (the North). "Federalism, associated with John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, assumed that people could not be trusted to resist self-interest and so must be governed by a strong federal government."
The Republicans -- Thomas Jefferson -- opposed centralized government and advocated a primarily agrarian society (the South). "Jeffersonian republicanism assumed that Americans were virtuous citizens who could and would act for the good of the whole."
Print Culture:
From the editors:
"Print culture encouraged American citizens to participate either publicly or privately in the moral life of the new nation. Using religion, reason, and precedent, writers waged arguments in periodicals, pamphlets, and newspapers about the propriety of, capacity for, and extent to which citizens were entitled to such participation, and these arguments spilled over into fiction, poetry, and drama."
The Beginnings of American Romanticism (p. 331):
"... in yet another reaction against eighteenth-century rationalism, such works revealed the growing emphasis on emotion and sentiment in American literature. Even more heightened emotions and far more extreme psychological states were staples of the so-called gothic romances, sensational tales of horror and the supernatural like
Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and
Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk (1796)
two bestsellers imported from England. With their heavy doses of doom, gloom, magic, and mystery, such works strongly influenced American writers like Charles Brockden Brown."
Washington Irving's The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-20)