The Age of Reason and Enlightenment

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The Age of Reason and Enlightenment
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The Age of Reason in America

• Americans combined common sense and pragmatism
  with the ideas of the European thinkers
• Reason is the dominating characteristic

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American Thinkers

• Benjamin Franklin--inventive and curious mind
• Thomas Jefferson--drive to improve
• living conditions
• forms of government
• the individual mind
• Thomas Paine--Common Sense-- rational appeal for
  the struggle of independence

4
The Age of Reason emphasized

• reason over the imagination
• the social over the personal
• the common interest over the individual

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Literature in The Age of Reason

• was rooted in reality rather than imagination.
  The best minds in the country were engaged in
  political and scientific improvements
• the literature emphasized
• clarity
• order
• balance

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Genre in the Age of Reason

• poetry--unoriginal
• broadsides--poetic equivalents to a pamphlet
• pamphlet--instructional and inspirational
• Common Sense
• The Federalist Papers
• Speeches

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Puritan vs. Rationalist

• God controls the universe in mysterious ways
• Man is essentially evil
• Bible contains all truth

• God created the laws of nature
• Man is essentially good
• We should seek further truth