Tefl ict american literature-revlution and enlightenment

The Tempest:Shakespeare asks us to consider questions

regarding equality, freedom and political authority. GONZALO

Had I plantation of this isle, my lord, And were the king on't, what would I do?

Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,And use of service, none; contract, succession,Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;No occupation; all men idle, all;And women too, but innocent and pure;No sovereignty; --

Who gets the political authority to rule and why do they get it? Birthright? Divine authority? Political consensus?

How do Native peoples govern themselves? Are Natives different types of humans than the English?

Is indentured servitude justifiable? Slavery? Why or why not?

The Puritan Worldview: A Covenant With God and

Religious Logic When we were come, Oh the number of pagans (now

merciless enemies) that there came about me, that I may say as David, "I had fainted, unless I had believed, etc" (Psalm 27.13). The next day was the Sabbath. I then remembered how careless I had been of God's holy time; how many Sabbaths I had lost and misspent, and how evilly I had walked in God's sight; which lay so close unto my spirit, that it was easy for me to see how righteous it was with God to cut off the thread of my life and cast me out of His presence forever. Yet the Lord still showed mercy to me, and upheld me; and as He wounded me with one hand, so he healed me with the other.

Literature of Revolution and the Enlightenment

The fundamental paradox of American democracy in particular is that it gallantly emerged as a fragile democratic experiment over and against an oppressive British empire- and aided by the French and Dutch empires-even while harboring its own imperial visions of westward expansion, with more than 20 percent of its population consisting of enslaved Africans... The Declaration of Independence, principally written by the thirty-three-year old revolutionary Thomas Jefferson-who himself embodied this paradox, being both a courageous freedom fighter against British imperialism and a cowardly aristocratic slaveholder of hundreds of Africans in his beloved Virginia-offers telling testament to this complex and contradictory character of the American democratic experiment.

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Benjamin Franklin



“Self-evident” is one of the most meaningful words in the Declaration of Independence, a document drafted by Thomas Jefferson but edited by some of his fellow founding fathers. According to Walter Isaacson, author of a biography of Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson’s original version used the phrase “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable” It was Franklin who deemed those same truths “self-evident,” to convey that they were rooted in rationality, not religion.

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel (1508-1512) “The Creation of Adam”



Enlightenment We can think of the enlightenment in Europe as a shift in attitude,

or a new “mental map” for understanding the world, brought about by a number of social, political, and intellectual transformations.

In part the enlightenment emerged from the breakdown of a “Universal” Christian religion that had previously secured a relationship between religious and secular powers (Thirty Years War).

Inspired by the Scientific Revolution, the enlightenment celebrated individual use of reason over the idea of an externally imposed authority or theological dogma. Moreover, as nature was understood as a system of universal self-regulating laws, philosophers framed human society in relationship to this natural order.

Humans start to be considered the highest expression of nature, and the idea of individual human capacity displaces god at the center of the mental map. Religious, political, and commercial freedoms become increasingly associated with a notion of human progress.

Jefferson And The Belief in Natural Law and Human Reason:"I

told him they were my trinity of the [three] greatest men the

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Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Man of science who believed that truth discovered by reason through observation could promote human happiness as well as truth communicated through God's direct revelation.

Bacon's work suggested that it was in humankind's power to discover truth by reason and that by doing that, humankind could better itself.



Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

A second man of science who studied gravity and the laws of motion. Newton's work demonstrated that it was possible through reason and study to discover the laws of nature and of nature's God.

Laws governing Earth and Rest of Universe (Universal natural laws!)

Newton's work suggested that the world is governed by laws that you could discover and understand; that there's a cause and effect, and that through reason and study you can figure out the cause and effect of nature's laws.



John Locke

(1632-1704)

John Locke, whose Second Treatise on Government (1689) suggested that you could apply nature's laws to the political world as well, and determine and understand natural and political rights.

Basically, Locke believed that people were born free, unhampered by government and with certain natural rights — life, liberty, and property — and that to protect these rights people decided to voluntarily leave this state of nature to form a civil government, contracting some of their natural rights to this government when they did so. So civil society was created to protect humankind's three natural rights — life, liberty, property.

If a civil government is a kind of voluntary contract, this suggests that people have a right to pull out of that contract if their rights are being violated.



Taken all of that together — Bacon, Newton, Locke, and the logic of their thoughts — you can see the empowering aspect of Jefferson's trinity.

All of those men in one way or another developed ideas that are empowering humankind. They're suggesting that there are laws of the universe that could be determined by people and applied to nature, to government, to science, to society in the hope of bettering things. They suggested that civil government is a contract created by and maintained by people, not some kind of a divine creation.



Tefl ict american literature-revlution and enlightenment

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