Dr. Watson Literary Analysis

Stephanie Silva
ENGL 2123A
Dr. Watson
16 February 2015
America, the Literary What does it mean to be American? Is America found in the language that is spoken? Is it in the geography? Or does America manifest itself in the literature that has lasted throughout the development of the nation? From the age of colonization to the age of the Romantics, the American people expressed their emotions, concerns, thoughts, and experiences through the written word. Individual writers wrote about their own American experiences and some even compared their life in America to their life in Europe. Although it was a product of Europe in its beginnings, America came into its own as a nation with literary prestige as it grew more independent from its European
According to Dr. Watson in her lecture titled “Eighteenth-Century American Literature,” the increase in population in the colonies caused an increase in diversity, secularism, and sectionalism as the eighteenth century began (Watson). The increase in secularism was mainly due to the revolutionary ideas of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a movement motivated by reason and rationality, which began in Europe in the seventeenth century and spread to America by the eighteenth century. While the Age of Reason sparked many great changes in science and philosophy in Europe, it was largely a political movement in America. American thought was very much shaped by the ideas of natural law and individual liberty from European enlightened thinker, John Locke, so “liberalism and progress increasingly became the appropriate ways to interpret the American Experience” (Ruland 38). The Enlightenment was a widespread movement that effected America at its very core with the writing of the Declaration of Independence, a document that illustrates the Lockean ideas of “life liberty, and property” and exemplifies the nation’s desire to be its own entity (Ruland 38). Because of the great influence of the Enlightenment, many enlightened writers and thinkers even used their reason to argue for the American Revolution. Thomas Paine published a pamphlet in 1776 titled, Common Sense, where he “embodied the voice of the revolution itself” by logically arguing for it (Ruland 57). One person that was greatly influenced by enlightened principles and ideas was Benjamin Franklin who was a Deist, a scientist, politician, American Founding Father, and even a literary critic (Ruland 46). Franklin is what some would call a “self-made American man” because in his Autobiography, he describes his attempt to prove himself by going from rags to riches (Watson). In contrast to the Enlightenment, there was another