The American Enlightenment, 1750-1820 [Paperback]

[A] learned, highly intelligent study of American revolutionary writing...Ferguson's chapters on the intellectual and social sources of the revolution, on how the rhetoric of revolutionary writing works now and worked then, politically, and on aspects of the American enlightenment, are masterful: original, challenging, immensely informative.[The] chapter on 'Religious Voices' is atour de forceof intelligence and conviction...In his concluding chapter [we] hear the voices of Native and African Americans...Ferguson's narrative [is] engrossing.The best interpretation of the American Enlightenment since that of Henry F. May...[It] should be required reading for anyone concerned with eighteenth-century American thought.The press and author of the present book have done a useful service by reprinting part of Volume I of theCambridge History of American Literature,especially since the study of the enlightenment seems to have fallen from favour in recent years...The study focuses on interpretation of texts and the language, signs and symbols they contain. For the most part, the analysis necessarily focuses on the written words of the literate classes, but there is also some interesting discussion of popular, essentially non-literary behavior and its contribution to the Revolutionary process.Robert Ferguson seeks an understanding of the American Revolution through a survey of the era's literature. He examines the use of formal elements and generic combinations in public documents, and political and religious writings, and conveys the impact such writings had. Here, the Revolution is the 'greatest literary achievement of the eighteenth-century America'...The literature which motivated the public (from the British and Americans, loyalists and patriots, secular and the religious) undergoes a close reading and analysis.In this book Robert Ferguson examines the manner and content of the literature of the American Revolution and early Republic. He explores the meaninlã+