A Speaking Aristocracy

by Grasso, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780807847725
• ISBN10: 0807847720
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-03-01
• Publisher: Omohundro Inst of Early Amer

Summary

As cultural authority was reconstituted in the Revolutionary era, knowledge reconceived in the age of Enlightenment, and the means of communication radically altered by the proliferation of print, speakers and writers in eighteenth-century America began to describe themselves and their world in new ways. Drawing on hundreds of sermons, essays, speeches, letters, journals, plays, poems, and newspaper articles, Christopher Grasso explores how intellectuals, preachers, and polemicists transformed both the forms and the substance of public discussion in eighteenth-century Connecticut. In New England through the first half of the century, only learned clergymen regularly addressed the public. After midcentury, however, newspapers, essays, and eventually lay orations introduced new rhetorical strategies to persuade or instruct an audience. With the rise of a print culture in the early Republic, the intellectual elite had to compete with other voices and address multiple audiences. By the end of the century, concludes Grasso, public discourse came to be understood not as the words of an authoritative few tothe people but rather as a civic conversation ofthe people.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
List of Illustrations	xi
Introduction	1	(16)
PART I: MEANING AND MORAL ORDER	17	(168)
The Power of the Public Covenant	24	(62)
Only a Great Awakening: Jonathan Edwards and the Regulation of Religious Discourse	86	(58)
Legalism and Orthodoxy: Thomas Clap and the Transformation of Legal Culture	144	(41)
PART II: CULTIVATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT	185	(276)
The Experimental Philosophy of Farming: Jared Eliot and the Cultivation of Connecticut	190	(40)
Christian Knowledge and Revolutionary New England: The Education of Ezra Stiles	230	(55)
PART III: REVOLUTION AND STEADY HABITS
Print, Poetry, and Politics: John Trumbull and the Transformation of the Public Sphere	285	(42)
Reawakening the Public Mind: Timothy Dwight and the Rhetoric of New England	327	(59)
Political Characters and Public Words	386	(75)
Conclusion: The New Politics of Revolution and Steady Habits	461	(26)
Appendix 1: Connecticut Imprints	487	(4)
Appendix 2: Connecticut Election Sermons	491	(4)
Appendix 3: A Note on the Historiography of the Great Awakening	495	(4)
Index	499