| Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards: And the Representation of American Culture Contributor(s): Oberg, Barbara B. (Editor), Stout, Harry S. (Editor) |
|
 |
ISBN: 019507775X ISBN-13: 9780195077759 Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA OUR PRICE: $193.05 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: May 1993 Annotation: No colonial figures so completely anticipated the shape of American culture - at once material and spiritual, piously secular and pragmatically sacred - as did Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin. Commonly labeled "Puritan" and "Yankee" respectively, Edwards and Franklin evoke seemingly opposite ideals. Puritan values, embraced by Edwards and sustained in American "evangelicalism", focus on God, communal faith, and self-denial. Yankee attributes, espoused by Franklin and sustained in American liberal republicanism, coalesce around the trinity of hard work, independent virtue, and utilitarian self-happiness. For two and a half centuries these alternative emphases and orientations have coexisted in uneasy tension both individually and in American society at large. In contrast to traditional comparative studies, which portray Edwards and Franklin as mutually exclusive ideal types, this interdisciplinary collection of essays allows polemical contrasts to disappear and Edwards and Franklin emerge as contrapuntal themes in a larger unity. From these essays, written by distinguished historians and literary critics such as Ruth Bloch, Edwin S. Gaustad, Daniel Walker Howe, J. A. Leo Lemay, and David Levin, emerges a portrait of two men who shared a common concern with mind, character, and virtue that shaped a legacy that would define much of American character for generations to come. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - General - History | United States - General - Religion | Philosophy |
| Dewey: 810.900 |
| LCCN: 92034327 |
| Physical Information: 0.85" H x 6.32" W x 9.3" (1.19 lbs) 240 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This interdisciplinary collection of comparative essays by distinguished historians and literary critics looks at aspects of the thought of Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin and considers the place of these two men in American culture. Probably the two most examined figures of the colonial period, they have often been the object of comparative studies. These characterizations usually portray them as mutually exclusive ideal types, thus placing them in categories as different and opposed as traditional and modern. In these essays--by such scholars as William Breitenbach, Edwin Gaustad, Elizabeth Dunn, and Ruth Bloch--polemical contrasts disappear and Edwards and Franklin emerge as contrapuntal themes in a larger unity. Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Representation of American Culture is a valuable addition to scholarship on American literature and thought. |