The Village Enlightenment in New England, 1760-1820
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4223042 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Jaffee (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1990 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 327 |
| Publication date | 1990-07-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2938091 |
| OpenAlex | W2317518922 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
S ILAS Felton aspired to see the new American nation become a Republic of Letters whose citizens were not only literate-that is, truly civilized and capable of being truly republican-but would employ their literacy to improve their minds and lives. Felton lived in an inland village of Massachusetts, distant from the cosmopolitan centers of culture, yet, as his autobiography relates, such exemplary texts as Benjamin Franklin's life and writings could fall into his hands-even in remote Marlborough-and he could aim to model himself on America's first great Man of Letters.' Robert Thomas, a publisher, and Amos Taylor, a author-peddler of printed matter, helped supply to the New England countryside the wherewithal to realize Felton's dream. All three men, breaking away from agrarian pursuits, forged new careers pioneering a rural form of what Robert Darnton calls the business of Enlightenment. Typical of their increasing kind, all three-as producer, purveyor, or consumer of print-promoted the democratization of knowledge. The activities of all three, in their different yet complementary ways, intertwined commerce and culture in a process-really, a transformation-that I call the Village Enlightenment.2
Agrarian society · Agriculture · Archaeology · Art history · Biography · Democracy · Democratization · Dream · Enlightenment · Literacy · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American Environmental and Regional History · History · Law · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.23 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1991 - 2014 (24) |
| Highly cited | No |