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Concetta Cunningham
Dr. Shoaib
ENG231_44
October 18, 2019
Natural of Self
Introduction
The eighteenth century was a time of relief and emission from the tautness of living a life of mysteriousness and spurt. This time was a relief from barbarism and unawareness of the Gothic centuries. The dark period provoked people to change the way of life and bring change which ultimately can reform their life association. It was a kind of general wish that people wanted to come out of rural and dark life. It was the time when sanity, culture, and civilization were reviving. At this time, there was a general feeling of emancipation from the historic specters. People wanted relief from the pains of the civil war period. This desire for change reformed many aspects of social life. People were changing and wished that they should be ruled by those who have moral courage, emancipation and an urge to bring about reforms in the life of ordinary citizens. Those who realized the sensitivity of the impulse people wanted, started bringing reforms. It was the time when literature was rewritten and a new social structure was recreated. Those who were bringing change wanted to reform their selves. The first one among those were writers who take hold of the pens and reformed a manner of thinking. It was the time when the writers, philosophers, and academicians started writing about nature, philosophy, and leisure. Such writings gradually started the alluring population from those times. Nature was closed to them and this was how they started to release the gap which existed between nature and the human population. In their efforts of such reformations, they remained successful in bringing change in the thinking pattern and self- realization. Therefore, considering the writing style of writers of those times, it remains right to argue that the eighteenth-century literature was fashioned to acknowledge the righteousness and free-thinking.
Analysis
The eighteenth-century which was considered as a time of revival and restructuring was also considered as the golden age for natural theology. Boyle, Locke, and Spinoza took the courage to think freely. It was not the time of revelations rather an acknowledgment of natural things and self-realization. Nothing in the literature developed in those times was the same as the religious literature previously had been structured. The years following the American Revolution have been considered as the conventionally dark period in American literary history. Americans who had poetic nature of mind wrote specifically political, public and instructive verses poems. The poetry and literature were distinctively written for the purpose of persuading people to vote for a certain candidate or embrace any political figure ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"XgH68arD","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Brunjes)","plainCitation":"(Brunjes)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":268,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/9Hfkg8Y0/items/NKMXI79B"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/9Hfkg8Y0/items/NKMXI79B"],"itemData":{"id":268,"type":"article-journal","title":"The American Struggle for Identity in 18th Century Newspaper Verse","container-title":"Bridgewater Review","page":"7-10","volume":"17","issue":"1","author":[{"family":"Brunjes","given":"Ann"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["1998"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Brunjes). Though the contemporary readers might not find it as the aspiring or embracing it as the works of literacy as they are unable to apprehend or transcend their times. However, American literature about controversial topics to people of those times was as literary as today’s literature is.
The Enlightenment period is well identified with its three different accomplishments such as political, ethical and religious. The American Revolution between the periods of 1775-83 encouraged the re-make of philosophical theories. It was the success as literature helped explain and understand the natural world phenomenon that shaped the social and political world. It laid the basis of the existing governance model. The literature provided the enunciation of political standards of self-determination and equality, the institutional insight of the governed, the articulation of basic natural human rights to be honored and considered by any legitimate political system. It also presented the notion of toleration for immense diversification of religions for it was reflected as an act of virtue to be privileged in a highly ordered society. It also offered the deliverance of basic political powers and accountability within the system and other vital characteristics of Western democracies.
Cotton Mather’s work in the early years of the 18th century was considered as the defense of ancient Puritan convictions. His famous work ‘Bonifacius or Essays to do Good' transacts with American creation and he links religion, primarily, Puritanism with the intention to declare that the society has become inextricable. Mather admonished his readers to commend their neighbors which had no apparent sense of self-irony and was the same single-tracked ethical vision and disregard for people's emotions just as in Polly Baker's case. Benjamin Franklin who was inspired by the work of Mather, made people speak up about their natural rights and the privilege of self-beings with authority. He realized that humans were superior beings as his self-effacement was well aware. Through his writing, Franklin persuaded people to view his personality as superior and allowed them to draw conclusions from their own conscious and understand things that he could. But on the other hand, he manipulated people such that they were all means of beneficent to others and they needed to persuade self-interest. His various linguistic tools also added a sense of humor and pleasure in American literature ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"RaBLtBly","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Covici)","plainCitation":"(Covici)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":266,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/9Hfkg8Y0/items/XT92WWYA"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/9Hfkg8Y0/items/XT92WWYA"],"itemData":{"id":266,"type":"book","title":"Humor and revelation in American literature : the Puritan connection","publisher":"Univ. of Missouri Press","publisher-place":"Columbia","source":"http://worldcat.org","archive":"/z-wcorg/","event-place":"Columbia","ISBN":"0-8262-1095-3","language":"English","author":[{"family":"Covici","given":"Pascal","suffix":""}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["1997"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Covici).
Cotton Mather's work can also be used as an example where Jonathan Edwards had religious differences and did not allow the intermingling or presence among any non-Christians. His expression in the sermons could be characterized as moving and emotional. During the second half of the century, the imperative characteristics of his mind show much he valued The Nature of True Virtue. Mather, Franklin, and Edwards all shared the common belief and tried to instill it in the people. They solved the matter of ingeniously fighting with self and resolute for the good and the glory of God ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"1BLdLXiP","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Hatch and Stout)","plainCitation":"(Hatch and Stout)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":267,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/9Hfkg8Y0/items/SQ8LLMCR"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/9Hfkg8Y0/items/SQ8LLMCR"],"itemData":{"id":267,"type":"webpage","title":"Jonathan Edwards and the American experience","URL":"http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=299091","language":"English","author":[{"family":"Hatch","given":"Nathan O.","suffix":""},{"family":"Stout","given":"Harry S.","suffix":""}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["1988"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Hatch and Stout). Thomas Paine became one of the most operative propagandists for the cause of colonialism. His works were published in various papers his mist significant part of this practice was his pamphlets. It influenced the colonists in such a way that they agreed on declaring Independence. The paper ‘The American Crisis' from 1776 influenced Americans to wake up and fight until they can and pas through the darkest years of the war. His beliefs were based on the deism and to highlight the conflict and stir the melodrama by using angelic colonists in opposition to forces of evil.
Conclusion
The tug of the American Revolution and the expressiveness in the American literature emphasized the matter of difference that had been spewing among the Unites States and Britain politics. The political writers such as John Dickinson, Joseph Galloway and above all Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin loomed high in the movement. Several political writers, however, they have maintained the belief that in a bitter way and how mutual people have found this setting as quite influential. The poems and essays written by political and religious philosophers during the darkest period of American history created a sense of self-realization and people understood the meaning of freedom and their rights. The poetic expression of beliefs and efforts of alluring probable in understanding their worth is an excruciating remark as moving masses with the provided literature alone. The expression of rights and self-determination of the Americans initiated from that enlightenment period. It was the call for the general masses to understand the worth of the movements and political and religious agendas that were later expressed to the regulatory bodies. American literature has played a greater role in the identity of characteristics of self and natural rights of which every citizen is entitled.
Works Cited
ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Brunjes, Ann. “The American Struggle for Identity in 18th Century Newspaper Verse.” Bridgewater Review, vol. 17, no. 1, 1998, pp. 7–10.
Covici, Pascal. Humor and Revelation in American Literature : The Puritan Connection. Univ. of Missouri Press, 1997. /z-wcorg/.
Hatch, Nathan O., and Harry S. Stout. Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience. 1988, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=299091.
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