THE AGE OF REASON

1. THE AGE OF REASON THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD Early 1700’s-1800

2. American Literature until this point • Only a small amount of literature has accumulated. • Native American poetry and legends. (Oral) • Puritans- only that which looked inward and involved religious beliefs (private letters, essays, sermons, personal poetry).

3. Age of Reason/ Rationalism- in America • Rise of political publications, written documents, almanacs, pamphlets. • Few poets and essayists. • Modern short story not yet invented. • No American novel or drama.

4. Science in the New World • The invasion of smallpox • Cotton Mather, the great Puritan minister and historian, vs. Dr. William Douglass and the medical community

5. An American Pattern: Thought in Action • It is important to remember that seemingly opposite qualities of the American character often existed side by side. Puritans and Rationalists shared the same time period. • A practical approach to social change and scientific research was a necessity in America. As Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur wrote in his classic Letters from an American Farmer (1782), the American pioneer farmer “finds himself suddenly deprived of the assistance of friends, neighbors, tradesmen, and of all those inferior links which make a well-established society so beautiful and pleasing. He and his family are now alone. On their courage, perseverance, and skill their success depends.”

6. The Age of Reason • The Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment, began in Europe with the rationalist philosophers and scientists of the seventeenth century. • Rationalism is the belief that we can arrive at truth by using our reason rather than by relying on the authority of the past, on religious faith, or on intuition. Reason over faith. • The emergence of modern science and the scientific method had much to do with this new emphasis on reason and free inquiry.

7. Age of Reason/ Puritans • The Puritans vs… • Sir Isaac Newton (God as a clockmaker), • René Descartes ( “I think, therefore I am.”), • and John Locke. • Unlike Puritans they were not worried about the hereafter. • They assumed people were good and not evil.

8. The Age of Reason in America • American pragmatism, exemplified by the story of Cotton Mather, was characterized by an interest in the public welfare and a willingness to experiment, to try things out, no matter what the authorities might say. • The Age of Reason in America, then, combined common sense with ideas from European thinkers. • From this mixture of ideas and outlooks came much of the triumph of eighteenth-century American life: • the inventive and curious minds of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson; • the drive to improve living conditions, forms of government, and individual minds; • and the thinking behind the important statement “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

9. Deism and the Rationalist Mind • It seemed unlikely to rationalist thinkers that God would choose to reveal Himself only at particular times to particular people. It seemed much more reasonable to believe that God had made it possible for all people at all times to discover natural laws through their God-given faculty of reason. • American deists came from different religious backgrounds. • Deists believed that the universe was orderly and good. • In contrast to the Puritans, deists stressed humanity’s inherent goodness. • They believed in the perfectability of every individual through the use of reason. • God’s objective, in the deist view, was the happiness of His creatures. • Therefore, the best form of worship was to do good for others.

10. Deism and the Founding Fathers • Although a strongly emotional brand of religion, known as the Great Awakening, was flourishing; nevertheless, the rationalist point of view was shared, in varying degrees, by the Founding Fathers. • It provided the basis for the principles of the American Revolution and for our system of government. • Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was such an appeal. Published in 1776, it was the most influential of many Revolutionary pamphlets and was read by virtually every American within months of its appearance. The very phrase common sense had come to mean the reasoning ability that all people share. Paine argued that we should seek independence in order to restore the natural rights that were evident to our reason but that had been taken away from the British. “’Tis repugnant to reason,” he wrote, “to the universal order of things, to all examples from former ages, to suppose that this continent can long remain subject to any external power.” • Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence based its arguments on the same rationalist assumptions about the relations between people, God, and the natural law.

11. -from Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography “I never doubted the existence of the deity, that He made the world, and governed it with His providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished and virtue rewarded either here or hereafter; these I esteemed the essentials of every religion, and being to be found in all the religions we had in our country I respected them all.”

12. American Literature in the Age of Reason • Rooted in reality rather than imagination • Concentration on social, political, and scientific improvements (pamphlets, newspapers, almanacs, speeches, public letters) • An age of pamphlets • Relations—and ultimately war—with England were major concerns for many years • Following the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the problems of organizing and governing the new nation were of the highest importance. • The Federalist Papers, written by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, may be thought of as the pamphlet form elevated to the highest level. These essays explain the ideas behind our Constitution. • American poetry was unoriginal, often written in direct imitation of British models. Many poems and ballads ridiculed the British and urged Americans to take political action.

13. Anderson, Robert, et al. Elements of Literature. Fifth Course. Literature of the United States. Austin: Holt, Rinhart and Winston, Inc., 1989.