Authority, Autonomy, and Representation in American Literature, 1776-1865

by Mark R. Patterson

Overview

From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, a familiar scene appears and reappears in American literature: a speaker stands before a crowd of men and women, attempting to mitigate their natural suspicions in order to form a body of federated wills. In this important study of the relationship of literature and politics, Mark Patterson argues that this scene restates political issues in literary terms and embodies the essential problems of American democracy facing both politicians and writers: What is autonomy? How does representation work? Where does true authority lie? Beginning with the debate over ratification of the United States Constitution, Patterson follows out the complex literary consequences of these questions.

A work of literary history and criticism, this study also offers valuable insights into matters of political and literary theory. In separate chapters on Benjamin Frankin, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, and Charles Brockden Brown in the post-Revolutionary period and on Fenimore Cooper, Emerson, and Melville in the antebellum period, Patterson provides a series of brilliant readings of major texts in order to describe how American writers have conflated political and literary concerns as a means to their own social authority.

Originally published in 1988.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691601854
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #928
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

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Authority, Autonomy, and Representation in American Literature, 1776â"1865

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By Mark R. Patterson

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1988 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06743-8

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CHAPTER 1

Benjamin Franklin and the Authority of Imitation

Declaring Independence

When Benjamin Franklin began Part Three of his Autobiography in August of 1788, he was, for the first time, writing from his own home. Whereas the earlier sections had been composed in England (in 1771) and France (in 1784), he now wrote in his own library on Market Street. But home meant not only the city of Philadelphia or America, which, after all, has always been more a conceptual space than an actual geographical location; home in late summer of 1788 also included the recently constituted and ratified United States of America. In fact, as Franklin looked back over his accomplishments (no doubt with characteristic vanity), his role in helping to write and to ratify the federal Constitution must have seemed significant, for his efforts in Philadelphia the previous year had insured that his nation would have a permanent political and legal identity. It was therefore appropriate that, now assured of the Constitution's ratification, Franklin would turn to his memoirs. For Franklin, personal and national identities and fortunes were inseparable.

If the place of composition was significant, the moment Franklin chose to renew the writing of his life was even more so: Having (re)founded itself in the Constitution, and preparing now to secure its destiny, America needed a new guide in the wilderness. Thus, although the identity of Franklin under construction was that of a generic American, this particular historical moment provided the rhetorical impetus for that autobiographical act. And it is precisely the rhetorical nature of the Autobiography that mediates between the historical necessities facing Franklin and his contemporaries, those political squabbles requiring his skill at conciliation, and the representative, universal quality of his life. Over the past year, ever since the Philadelphia Constitution Convention had adjourned on 17 September 1787, debate over that document had threatened to splinter the fragile political unity achieved during the Revolutionary War into autonomous and bickering states. It was Franklin himself who made the closing speech at the convention, urging each person there to "doubt a little of his infallibility" and approve the Constitution. Part Three of the Autobiography, therefore, concerns itself with illustrating the very nature of fallibility, using Franklin's dealings with historical figures and events as heuristic anecdotes.

Putting aside for the moment the particular political issues addressed in Part Three, we must first regard this work's peculiar ability to combine the occasional and the universal. Expressly begun to give Americans a model for personal and national success, the Autobiography also responds to the historical pressures at each moment of composition. The three places where Franklin composed the work therefore correspond to three crucial historical moments: Twyford in England when Franklin was negotiating with Parliament (1771); Passy in France where he remained minister after the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain was signed (1784); and Philadelphia after the Constitution Convention (1788). Because Franklin's "personal being," as Mitchell Breitwieser has noted, "is in the largest sense rhetorical" each historical moment influenced Franklin's rhetorical strategy and thereby dictated the self we encounter in each section. Taken together, the selves we encounter in the four parts of the Autobiography make up Benjamin Franklin, Printer and Representative American, but each self is also discontinuous, rhetorically composed to respond to the exigencies of the historical moment. Each section (taking the last two together), therefore, corresponds to the key documents of the Revolutionary period: the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and Constitution.

By looking at the Autobiography as a series of related, but discontinuous, narratives, each bound to a particular historical moment and each with a specific rhetorical design on the reader, we discover that it is rhetoric itself which unites personal and national histories. What Franklin narrates is a life full of encounters with various forms of authority; what he assumes as narrator of that life is his own authority. In doing so he takes on the central issues of this period: the nature and location of authority and how that authority was to be represented. As Jonathan Boucher, the Tory minister, had said of the changes taking place during the Revolution, "Americans were making a truly revolutionary transformation in the structure of authority." In each section of the Autobiography, Franklin describes his experience with competing figures of authority and, having internalized the most practical and efficacious, makes himself the representative, the narrator, of that authority for the reader.

* * *

Franklin begins his Autobiography as a personal declaration of independence. Describing his steady rise in society and growing influence in a country of equally great potential, Part One defines the qualities and efforts necessary for a republic not yet in existence and outlines the conditions that make Franklin himself the model governor. The Franklin we see at the opening of the Autobiography seeks independence, but not revolution. His goal is to become the paradigmatic American, but true to his practical nature he employs the standards at hand, using them as the foundation for his own authority. Authority alone, however, is not enough; Franklin couples it with a claim for autonomy. He initially defines this authority in terms of its imitability, but he preserves his independence through a narrative strategy of detached (and detachable) reasonable discussion and exposition He seeks to achieve, in other words, the voice of rational inquiry, witty and slightly ironic perhaps, but also self-assured and self-possessed It is the voice of Benjamin Franklin, Printer cool as the type itself, detached from the experience of past events and his younger selves and related to his readers by representing their desires for success As he begins to give shape to his self, Franklin changes from the guise of traditional paternal authority speaking to his son to a social and theatrical role Like Hawthorne's Robin Mohneux, he transforms his conception of identity and authority from the fixed standards of familial ties to the arbitrary ties of social interaction and association

In the first section, Franklin immediately establishes the rhetorical strategy of paternal authority by employing the traditional epistolary genre of fatherly advice Here he attaches the reader to the terms of his authority

Twyford, at the Bishop of St Asaph's 1771

Dear Son,

I have ever had a Pleasure in obtaining any little Anecdotes of my Ancestors You may remember the Enquiries I made among the Remains of my Relations when you were with me in England, and the Journey I took for that purpose Now imagining it may be equally agreeable to you to know the Circumstances of my Life, many of which you are yet unacquainted with, and expecting a Weeks uninterrupted Leisure in my present Country Retirement, I sit down to write them for you Having emerg'd from the Poverty and Obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a State of Affluence and some Degree of Reputation in the World, and having gone so far thro' Life with a considerable Share of Felicity, the conducing Means I made use of, which, with the Blessing of God, so well succeeded, my Posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable to their own Situations, and therefore fit to be imitated

The Ciceronian structure with which Franklin ends this passage, the style of elevated rhetorical persuasion, masks the personal appeal to William Franklin, his son and governor of New Jersey. Although William may actually stand for all Americans, the particularity of address enacts those cultural filiopietistic codes that define and grant his father authority. The person addressed may not matter, but the form of address does. In the first lines, Franklin not only invokes his own memory for this task, but draws upon his son's participation as well: "You may remember." A slight gesture in itself, this call to William Franklin asks that the son assist in the family's genealogical epic and reattach himself to family matters from which he had been estranged. Having a son warrants Franklin's enterprise, and within this brief preface, he reconstructs the bonds of filial obedience and patriarchal authority. Evoking family history without threatening his son, Franklin suggests the dangers that filial disobedience and willfulness may pose to the continuity of the family's identity.

As he invokes the issue of paternal authority, however, Franklin adds to it the problematic consideration of imitation. It is perhaps intuitively clear the kinds of emotional or financial powers a father may possess, but how does an original, an authority "figure," legitimately warrant its own imitation? Part One soon establishes the means by which we identify legitimate models of imitation by providing negative examples: his brother's arbitrary tyranny, the improper conduct of Governors William Keith and William Burnett, and the clumsy managerial skills of William Bradford and Samuel Keimer, whom, Franklin says, "I found poorly qualified for their Business. Bradford had not been bred to it, and was very illiterate; and Keimer tho' something of a Scholar, was a mere Compositor" (BF, 78–79). Beginning his Autobiography with claims of his representative character, Franklin also presents this power in such a way as to judge other familial, political, and economic authorities.

It is Franklin's own father who escapes these particular failures of duty and authority Acknowledging his son's "Bookish Inclination," Josiah Franklin bound Benjamin to his brother, recognizing the quality of Benjamin's poetry, he luckily discouraged his son from being a poet, "most probably a very bad one" (BF, 60) The elder Franklin acts early in the Autobiography as a brake to his son's excesses, preventing young Benjamin from a potentially disastrous business venture with Governor Keith and stopping him from escaping, Ishmael-hke, out to sea To honor the memory of his father and mother, and presumably to present a model of filial piety for his own son, Franklin tells William how he provided his parents with a gravestone complete with inscription With this act he initiates the principal theme of the Autobiography the permanence and power of writing and the freedom one achieves from constructing (literally in this case) texts Here he not only expresses filial values, but his words themselves have an lllocutionary force in their enactment, and he recreates the value of filial piety in his letter to his son by publishing the text of the epitaph, thereby attaching himself to his father and his son to himself

At this moment Franklin makes a crucial break in his narrative that marks a stylistic and rhetorical turn "By my rambling Digressions," he writes, "I perceive my self to be grown old I us'd to write more methodically But one does not dress for private Company as for a publick Ball 'Tis perhaps only Negligence" (BF, 56–57) It is an enigmatic declaration that serves several purposes First, it reminds himself and his son of his advancing age, once again providing the possibility of sympathetic attachment between the two At the same time, Franklin calls attention to the narrative itself, particularly its digressive quality which is dragging him into a moment of intimate self-revelation and away from his expressed intention to model himself By foregrounding the moment of composition, Franklin creates divergent narratives the story of his youth, and the continuing creation of a self shared by the reader As he moves back into a discussion of his father, Franklin has announced his separation from that earlier life, announced his independence from the past

Although Franklin's father provides one of the few constraints on the ambitious son, and one of the few positive models, his influence begins at this point to be shared by others The series of male figures in this first section enact the varieties of competing authorities in the world. Father, boss, tyrant, counselor, all provide potential models of behavior and figures to whom the young Franklin can attach himself. The concept of attachment underlines the picaresque quality of Franklin's early life. If this early stage can be seen as a search for models and standards, these men do not so much serve as surrogate fathers as they reshape paternal authority according to new patterns. One constant remains: Authorities are those who are fixed and move others. Franklin, for example, is sent by his father to Philadelphia and to England by Governor Keith. In both instances he turns to printing to survive.

Yet the attachments provided by authority, even that of imitation, are necessarily based on inequality. Authority, as we see in "The Way to Wealth," implies subordination, debt, and constraint; the myth that Franklin creates in the Autobiography is one of active independence. As a result, Franklin's travels, usually inaugurated by authority, prove insufficient to keep him down or to contain his natural abilities. Just the opposite: He thrives in his new environments, changing them to suit his needs. By defining his ties to family and society in terms of credit or his famous metaphorical "errata," Franklin is able to make various forms of authority conditional to his ability to repay or correct them. In a sense, he repays his father's guidance through his act of "filial Regard," a gesture which also signals his own power. Because his errata are simply moral debts, serving only to create bonds that can be erased or broken upon repayment, then all social ties are found to be external and contingent. As he narrates his steady progress through the imitation of role models and his successful correction of errata and repayment of debts, Franklin describes the internalization of authority. This gradual movement toward an internal authority enacts his personal autonomy, that is, his ability to authorize or write his own self.

Throughout this first section, Franklin masters and exceeds his models. His most significant forms of imitation, and those most critical to his later success, are stylistic. Running across an old Spectator, Franklin decides to imitate its style:

I took some of the Papers, and making short Hints of the Sentiment in each Sentence, laid them by a few days, and then without looking at the Book, try'd to compleat the Papers again, by expressing each hinted Sentiment at length and as fully as it had been express'd before, in any suitable Words, that should come to hand

Then I compar'd my Spectator with the Original, discover'd some of my Faults, and corrected them (BF, 62)

Notice that his performance creates "my Spectator," as he lays claim to possession by force of language In the same sense, to write "my Recollections" implies self-possession After comparing other versions, Franklin announces he "had been lucky enough to improve the Method or the Language and this encourag'd me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English Writer, of which I was extreamly ambitious" (BF, 62) Franklin's discussion of literary imitation suggests that improvement in style implies not only an exceeding of the model, but also its ownership.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Authority, Autonomy, and Representation in American Literature, 1776â"1865 by Mark R. Patterson. Copyright © 1988 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• CONTENTS, pg. vii
• PREFACE, pg. ix
• INTRODUCTION, pg. xv
• ABBREVIATIONS OF FREQUENTLY CITED WORKS, pg. xxix
• Chapter One. Benjamin Franklin and the Authority of Imitation, pg. 3
• Chapter Two. Hugh Henry Brackenridge and Representation, pg. 34
• Chapter Three. Charles Brockden Brown, Authority, and Intentionality, pg. 61
• Chapter Four. Myth from the Perspective of History: James Fenimore Cooper and Paternal Authorities, pg. 81
• Chapter Five. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the American Representative, pg. 137
• Chapter Six. Herman Melville: The Authority of Confidence, pg. 189
• Conclusion, pg. 240
• Index, pg. 245