Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Representation of American Culture

by Barbara B. Oberg (Editor)

This interdisciplinary collection of comparative essays by distinguished historians and literary critics looks at aspects of the thought of Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin and considers the place of these two men in American culture. Probably the two most examined figures of the colonial period, they have often been the object of comparative studies. These characterizations usually portray them as mutually exclusive ideal types, thus placing them in categories as different and opposed as "traditional" and "modern." In these essays--by such scholars as William Breitenbach, Edwin Gaustad, Elizabeth Dunn, and Ruth Bloch--polemical contrasts disappear and Edwards and Franklin emerge as contrapuntal themes in a larger unity. Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Representation of American Culture is a valuable addition to scholarship on American literature and thought.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published May 20, 1993

About the author

Barbara B. Oberg, senior research scholar at Princeton University, was general editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson from 1999 to 2014.

Reviews

[Coyle]

Read for my dissertation, this is an excellent and fascinating collection of essays about Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin and the growing divisions in American culture (the remnants of Puritanism against the nascent Enlightenment). Especially interesting was the comparison of Edwards "Resolutions" with the list of virtues in Franklin's "Autobiography."
This book isn't for everyone- just for people interested in American intellectual history.