Enlightenment
UNIT 5 FROM THE COLONIAL TO THE FEDERAL: THE CONTEXTS OF THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT
Objectives Introduction: The material basis of the American Enlightenment The Enlightenment in America. Slavery and the Enlightenment. The American Woman of the Eighteenth Century Let Us Sum Up Questions Suggested Readings
5.0
OBJECTIVES
The aim of this Unit is to take stock of the contexts of American literature produced between the period of the early European colonial settlements in America and the formation of a federal association of these colonies in the wake of their struggle to achieve independence from the domination of the government in England. This period is often referred to as the period of the American Enlightenment, taking off from the Enlightenment in England in terms of its ideas and ideals. Some of these ideas and ideals, as well as their exponents are presented in the Unit. The Unit intends to offset the 'optimism' of the Enlightenment ideology in general by focussing upon certain 'darker' aspects of the Enlightenment period.
5.1
INTRODUCTION: THE MATERIAL BASIS OF THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT
By the early 1700s two distinct economic worlds had taken shape in the colonies, generally north and south of Pennsylvania's southern border. One exported two crops, rice and tobacco, to Europe, and was in the process of constructing all its ways of living and thinking around a unique institution: chattel slavery. The other consisted overwhelmingly of, not the big planters such as those who owned the tobacco and rice plantations but, of small farmers free of feudal obligations to anyone superior to them. These two societies were unlike anything in the British Isles or in Europe as a whole. The distinction between the southern and the northern colonies gradually began to be erased with the expansion of agricultural activities in the north to the extent that the colonies there started exporting their produce, contrary to their earlier practice, to the
Objectives Introduction: The material basis of the American Enlightenment The Enlightenment in America. Slavery and the Enlightenment. The American Woman of the Eighteenth Century Let Us Sum Up Questions Suggested Readings
5.0
OBJECTIVES
The aim of this Unit is to take stock of the contexts of American literature produced between the period of the early European colonial settlements in America and the formation of a federal association of these colonies in the wake of their struggle to achieve independence from the domination of the government in England. This period is often referred to as the period of the American Enlightenment, taking off from the Enlightenment in England in terms of its ideas and ideals. Some of these ideas and ideals, as well as their exponents are presented in the Unit. The Unit intends to offset the 'optimism' of the Enlightenment ideology in general by focussing upon certain 'darker' aspects of the Enlightenment period.
5.1
INTRODUCTION: THE MATERIAL BASIS OF THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT
By the early 1700s two distinct economic worlds had taken shape in the colonies, generally north and south of Pennsylvania's southern border. One exported two crops, rice and tobacco, to Europe, and was in the process of constructing all its ways of living and thinking around a unique institution: chattel slavery. The other consisted overwhelmingly of, not the big planters such as those who owned the tobacco and rice plantations but, of small farmers free of feudal obligations to anyone superior to them. These two societies were unlike anything in the British Isles or in Europe as a whole. The distinction between the southern and the northern colonies gradually began to be erased with the expansion of agricultural activities in the north to the extent that the colonies there started exporting their produce, contrary to their earlier practice, to the