Welcome to the Revolutionary Period AGE OF REASON/ENLIGHTENMENT (approx. 1750-1800)

The Revolutionary Period . . The British Are Coming. The British Are Going. The British Are Gone.

As the colonies expanded westward and became more prosperous, the British made more and more demands. They demanded more money through taxes.

The colonists didn’t want to send their hard-earned $$$ to King George III (who happened to be nuts!)

Colonists pulled down his statue & put his head on a stake. Then, they melted the 4,000 pound statue & made bullets.

The only way the colonists could make their complaints known was through speaking and writing.

No T.V. in 1765! No Radio! No Computer Games No Internet!

The colonists had to rely on the power of language -- the Written Word.

They used the written word almost as a weapon, to rail against Great Britain and to gain support for the Revolution.

Instead of preachers, America had men of reason. (We’ll get to their names later.)

Whereas the Puritan focus was on religion, survival, and simplicity . . . the folks in the Revolutionary Period focused on reason, practicality, and rationality.

Reasonable Practical Rational These are the key words to describe the writers and speakers of the Age of Reason -- The Enlightenment.

They believed they could discover the truth by the light of reason alone. REASON

The truth as they saw it was: All men are created equal . . . . . and are entitled life, liberty and property. The pursuit of happiness came later.

Where did all these ideas appear? . . . in pamphlets . . . in political speeches . . . in political documents . . . in posters called broadsides

Like the Puritans, these rationalists believed in God, but in a different way. A Puritan

They compared God to a clockmaker who, having created the perfect mechanism of this universe . . .

. . . then left God’s creation to run on its own. According to this view, God would not interfere with the operations of this perfect mechanism, and it made no sense to ask God to do so.

This outlook is called Deism.

Unlike the Puritans, Deists stressed humanity’s inherent goodness, not it’s evil nature.

Here come the men of the Age of Reason (because we knew you couldn’t wait any longer) Benny F. Pat H. Tommy J. Thomas P. Then there’s Johnny C. (or is it D.?) . . . Anyway he’s the guy who defined this new breed -- The Americans. Jean de Crevecoeur

Benjamin Franklin who thought our national symbol should be the turkey. Ben, c’mon give us a little teeth with that smile!

Patrick Henry who was called the firebrand of the Revolution. That’s quite an intense look you got there, Pat.

Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Hey, I’ve been to this guy’s house.

The literary style of this period swings from the plain prose and sly wit of Benjamin Franklin . . . Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.

. . . to the impassioned oratory of Patrick Henry’s speech to the Virginia Convention. Give me liberty or give me death!

In Review . . . A war was fought. Blood was shed. Bye Bye British. Of course, in the middle of all that shooting, a few Americans wrote some important literature.

Ben Franklin bio (140) & Aphorisms (148) Dec. of Ind. & Equiano Assignment Thomas Paine (168) & “Crisis” (174)

Persuasive Writing/Speaking appeals & components Patrick Henry (200) & speech (202) Phillis Wheatley Philip Freneau

Homework Read excerpt from The Crisis, Number 1 by Thomas Paine, p. 144, AND Answer Critical Thinking Questions 1-4

In 1776 Jefferson was chosen (with Franklin, Adams, and others) to write a declaration of the colonies’ independence. The draft presented to the Second Continental Congress was largely Jefferson’s work

In his “Speech in the Virginia Convention” in 1775, Patrick Henry publicly denounced the British king and urged the colonists to fight for independence. ?’s

Persuasive Writing Components State desire (or opinion) Recognize opposition (a. give opposing argument b. concede an opposing point) Support Style (metaphor, simile, parallel structure, allusion, analogy, alliteration)

Brought from Africa at age of eight Prodigy who learned English in 16 months Poetry was a complex web of classical allusions Phillis Wheatley

Often called the “father of American poetry” Talented poet Phillip Freneau

The End

Persuasive Appeals Logic: facts, statistics, expert testimony Emotion: figurative language, imagery, loaded words chart

Declaring Independence, 1710-1850 The Enlightenment brought new ideals and a new notion of selfhood to the American colonies. This program begins with an examination of the importance of the idea of the self-made man in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, and then turns to the development of this concept in the writings of Romanticist Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Explain the persuasive technique Henry uses at the very beginning of his speech. Look at ALL the vocabulary in the margins and footnotes and then read the sentences these words are used in. Absorb! Using the footnotes on p. 204, be sure you understand the three allusions. Find and write down two metaphors, including a brief explanation of each. Two examples of parallelism (you can write down the first 3-4 words of the examples) Two examples of rhetorical questions Speech to VA Con. ?’s