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The sentimental novel also used reform. It became the means for rousing concern about the plight of black slaves, poor people, and other unfortunate members of society.
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
He was born in 1706 in Boston, the son of a tallow-chandler. In 1718 he became a printer’s apprentice. In 1722 he began to write satirical papers under the name «Silens Dogood» for the «New England Courant» as a writer – enlightener. He was a philosopher, scientist. In 1729 he came to Philadelphia and found work as a printer. In 1726 set up his own press. In 1727 Benjamin created the «Junto Club» for the pursuit of scholarly knowledge.
In 1729 he bought the «Pennsylvania Gazette», it was later turned into «Saturday Evening Post». In 1732 he started issuing «Poor Richard’s Almanack». In 1742 he invented the Franklin Store and this is a collection of proverbs moral reflections, advertisements, recipes and advice, also remained popular for generations. In 1743 he founded the American Philosophical Society. In 1751 he makes experiments and observations in Electricity. In 1757 he went to London, as an agent for the Pennsylvania Assembly. In the same year he published «The Way to Wealth». During 1765–1770 he is very active against the Stamp Act in London.
In 1771 Benjamin wrote the first part of his «Autobiography». In 1775 he was sent as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. In 1776 he helped draft the Declaration of Independence. He is sent to Paris to negotiate the treaty of alliance. In 1783 he signed the Treaty of Paris. In 1784 he started working on the «Autobiography» again. In 1785 he returned to America. He wrote against slavery. Died in Philadelphia in 1790.
In 1773 he wrote a satirical pamphlet «Rules by which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One». In 1784 he published another pamphlet in England «Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America» in defense of American Indians. His satirical pamphlet «On the Slave Trade» became his political precept – will.
Herman Melville called him «Jack of all trades, master of each and mastered by none – the type and genius of his land…» and indeed Benjamin Franklin’s life bears testimony to the variety of his pursuits and talents. It is the story of a gradual rise to power and a constant success: as a printer, and a scientist (he studied earthquakes, invented bifocal spectacles, was the first American to enter the Royal Society of London for his discoveries on electricity), in his municipal responsibilities in Philadelphia (where he created both a fire company and a police force, and introduced paving), and in his national duties as a tireless diplomat. He was the perfect representative of the Enlightenment, of the tolerant, reasonable, scientific intellect of the 18th century, believing in the perfectibility of man.
Franklin’s writings are the varied – essays, letters, speeches, satirical works-but his literary masterpiece is his «Autobiography». Written in a simple and direct style aimed at being understood by all, it relates his rise to success and maturity. Through the varied steps and careers of his life, we see him assuming different poses and roles which the elderly narrator describes with lucidity and distance. His pragmatic insistence on virtue, industry and self – reliance was later to be criticized as «bourgeois» and «utilitarian», but there is deep sincerity in the «Autobiography»; one feels that Franklin tried to better his fellowmen’s physical, intellectual and social conditions, that he was mainly concerned with the «common benefit of mankind».
Franklin’s first book, «Poor Richard’s Almanac» also remained popular for future generations.
1. Over 200 tears ago, Benjamin Franklin wrote:
«The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting something that I was born too soon. It is impossible to imagine the heights to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter. Oh, that moral science were in as fair a way of improvement, that men woiuld cease to be wolves to one another, and that human beings would at length learn what they now improperly call humanity!» In your own words explain what Franklin meant by this statement and then in a short written essay, agree or disagree with his point of view as it applies to your life.
A piblic-spirited citizen – Yet, civic affairs was only one of his many interests.
He was also a scientist, patriot, businessman, statement, and man of the world
Franklin, the Scientist,
Franklin, the Patriot,
Franklin, the Businessman,
Franklin the Statesman.
Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810)
Charles brockden Brown was born in Philadelphia in the familty of hereditary gentleman by birth colonist His father was a trader. He prepared his son to the profession of a lawyer. Having left the lawschool Brown began engage himself as a lawyer, but in 1798 he left advocate’s office, he did not want to stay as a defender of unjustice. Brown went to New York where he devoted himself wholly to litrary activity writing eight novels for four years. Simultaneously he published «Monthly Magazine and American view «(from 1799 by 1803) on the pages of whose he published his own stories and excerpts from his own novels. Litrary – critical activity he did not give up ever.
Brown belonged to a new past-war seneration of American writers. He grewv in the conditious of strengthened bourgeois system. Brown lost ties with paine and Frenan. For aim Hamilton the leader of feduralists was not private enemy; and Brown wrote about him sympatheticobituary but true did not lose ties with French and English Enlightenment, with Godwin, the influence of the latter on Brown is felt in his novels.
The crisis of Enlightenment novelis seen in Browns interests to the heroes with ill, cofused souls, to the mysterious and intricate adventures to fatal mysteries. The life became more complicated incause of the development of bourgeois relations. The power of money drew the death of patriarchal moral and manners. In this condition instead of Enlightenment nvels there appear Gothic novels full of horrors and mysteries. His first novel «Wieland» (1798) came into being and where the author coudemnsamusing literature
Brown defends the unity of meaning and form. In the article «Standards of Taste» (1806) Brown states that the meaning gives dignity an dweight to the worle not a form. He says that 6he form without meaning looks like a nut without kernel; it diappoints. Brown was the first in American literature to speak about literary critics tobe a science. Brown states that literature hasthe task to enlishten people and it snould serve social aims. He made an invention= discovery the reason of unhappines of a mans roots in (is founded on) not on his nature, but its reason is in social institutions.
Brown’s easthetics prepared the appearance ofromanticism.
On Browns road went Hawthorne, Edgar Poeand Lippard. The narration is made on the name of Clara Wieland – the heroes (Theodore’s) sister. The next novel is «Ormond» («Ормонд «, 1799) in this novel the author makes one more step in the owning with American material. Stephen Dadleya New Yorkdruggist is honest and kind=well disposed. He is ruined by his adroitand inscrupulous impudent apprentice. Crais and to whom his drugstorepassed. To support his family Dadley becomes a clerk in a law.
Ormond is Dadley’s acquantance, Whoseves Dadley’s from hanger daeth. But later it turns out that the young man is a villain scoundrel. Ormond’s aim is to seduce =pervert Coustance. It was he who made Stephen Dadley poor using Craig as a wqeapon. Ormond had already enticed one girl. His next saerife became Constance. The real hero of the novel is Constance.
A month later Browns next novel «Arthur Mervin» appeared «Edgar Huntley, or Memoirs of the Sleep – Walker» aws published in July1799.
«Clara Howard» (1800) and «Jane Tacbot» (1801) are novels which have happy end.
General Characteristics of American Romanticism
Romanticism, transcendentalism and abolitionists writers reflected complex, contradictory pictures of the first half of the XIX century development of American society. They leaned upon the aesthetics of Romanticism, which was the leading literary school of those years. Appearance in America was inevitable historically as well as in European literatures. American romanticism had the same historical precondition and it rested on the same aesthetically basic and methods as European romanticism. American romanticism sprang up on the soil of the American revolution of 1775–1783 by some of the results. The principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness declared in the Declaration of Independence came to a contradiction with social and economic structure, which secured freedom & happiness of only rich owners.
Humdrum the life of the American middle class society spurned the writers with its prisms, dry practicality & narrow – mindedness of approach. The romanticists tried to contradict such prisms in either the life of the Indians, which had not yet been defined with capitalist civilization, or the Reich of romantic dreams of higher & more reasonable system.
In this way, there sprang up, peculiar to the aesthetics of romanticism, contradictions between the dreams & reality. For the romanticists it was characteristic to the material worried, in aspiring to contradict reality with abstract ideals. Romanticists sought their ideals outside real life, in the realism of dreams, because they couldn’t their ideals in the images taken from reality. Rejestiny the unattractive middle class worlds the romanticists imposed an invented world through their dreams. They also fried to depict real life, but the peculiarity of their creative methods defined the specific character and its reflection.
Events & stages in the romanticists works rise above the pettiness of every day life. The prosaic middle class is put against high romantic natures & every day practical interests as opposed to the struggle of mighty passions. Creation of fantastic characters who act in fantastic, imaginary situations – such were the methods of romantically typification & American romantic literature is not an exception to this. Romanticists consciously digressed from the ordinary, from the conditions of every day life, from every day concrete definition. In their artistic generalization, they were attracted by the symbolic & allegorical. Hidden & incomprehensible for romanticists were the reasons of social phenomena.
All the same, romanticism was a step forward in the development of literature. The romanticists widened the notion about life & deepened the understanding of life. They approached beauty of nature in a new fashion & they revealed deeply emotional perceptions of social existence.
The main achievement of romanticism was a steady attention to the inner world of man, to his spiritual life. The romanticists opposed the cult of sense, the cult of human passions, preferring enlightenment cult of realism. Thanks to it, they were able to express their protest against the suppression of the personality & to expose the complexity of people’s spiritual life at the beginning of the XIX century.
Together with European romanticists, American writers of this direction widened the borders of world of knowledge for people of those days.
American romanticism had to understand a new, very contradictory & intricate world dying & being born again to understand new human interrelations, to refuse the settled & to dealer new criteria. It was extremely difficult. The romanticists were distressed, they sought, they foresaw. They were delighted with life. They struggled for the best, they appreciated the resent past & present, then created the images of indomitable heroes & rebels, who were full of high passion such as: recalcitrance, anger & the thirst for justice.
All romanticist theories glorified the individualistic ideal of human behavior, but none of them explained individualism with regularities of social development. This differentiates romanticism from realism.
Romanticism is an effective method of artistic mastery the assimilation of reality without which the process of the aesthetic development of any nation world not is full.
Romanticists went from the life of an individual to the life of the country, not paying attention to social groups, layers or classes.
American romanticists did not have a single ideological program, which they could defend in their works. Besides the transdentalists’ club, there was no romanticists’ group, schools or trends. Washington Irving was alone in his Anglo – American position as «a intermediary» between Europe & America. Nathaniel Hawthorn was also single in his fight against Puritanism. Edgar Allow Poe was in literary & social isolation. Herman Mellville’s name was crossed out from literature when he still was alive. Yes!
But =Yet all of them were united in their protest against middle class morals, policy & aesthetical estimation, in their customs.
The sharpness of real contradictions determines the strife of romanticists to abstract & to oppose «the beautiful with the ugly» & «good with evil». Positive is raised & negative is lowered. That is whelp in the creative methods of romanticists contrasting engage much place, we can notice the melioration for the exceptional & unique & the titanium of amigos & underlined hyperbole in the description of natural elements.
Romanticists introduce dramatic conflicts with mysteries & «fatal» chance – fortuity; the plot acquires of adventurous heralds, the intrigue is intricate, the hero’s have sudden turns & troubles.
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