Enlightment Age

Enlightenment Age The Puritans believed that the sole purpose of writing was to bring the writer to debase themselves before God. And teach them the true importance of humility. Puritans wrote mainly memoirs and sermons. Puritans thought the church did have errors, but could be reformed. Growing up in the Colonial days meant strict, and God fearing obedience; education and religion were very important to them. In Mary Rowlandson writing, she was able to write about her Indian captures as somewhat kind and friendly.

This is far from what we have perceived of them. Mary Rowlandson believed what most Puritans did, that God was testing her faith and humbleness. Mary believed that her final escape was a lesson to “make us the more knowledge his hand and to see that our help is always in him” (American Literature). Puritans saw God in everything; God gave them trials and tribulations so they could learn to be humble and meek. From the capture of Mary Rowlandson, to Anne Bradstreet’s personal poems, we can see how much God had influence on their every thought, and every action.

The Fundamentalist thinkers of the Enlightenment saw things quite differently. They believed that writing was a method for recording logical reasoning, and often provoked rational thought. The Enlightenment era was a new intellectual movement that stressed reason and thought and the power of individuals to solve problems. Even though different philosophers approached their goals differently, they achieved it none the less. They all approached their goal differently due to their different upbringings, their different backgrounds, and most importantly their different environments.

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The Enlightenment period was known as the Age of Reason. Deism was a belief that God was impartial and there was no revealed religion to select body of people. Many believed that the rights belonged to the people. For example, John Locke believed that citizens were entitled to set of natural rights. John Locke’s philosophies and the ideas of the Enlightenment influenced Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence. The document uses the idea of the Natural Law and justifies the reasons for escaping Great Britain’s rule.

Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine wrote volumes on topics that questioned life, and the means by which one should live. Though there are a few small similarities between the writings of the two periods, there are considerably greater numbers of differences. Though the views of Puritans and Fundamentalists were dramatically different, they both believed in a certain code of morals and ethics. In both the Common Sense and The Crisis, No. 1. Thomas Paine uses metaphors to persuade the American Public to continue supporting the Revolutionary war in The Crisis.

Thomas Paine implements powerful metaphors to achieve the effect. In the Common Sense used literary style intended to appeal to the broad masses of people rather than the elect few. Throughout his writing there is an emphasis upon the independence of the individual. In the beginning of the Crisis #1 the document begins with the telescopic sentence: “ THESE are the times that try men’s souls,” which is contrary to the rest of the sentence lengths he uses.

This makes the beginning omnipoint and interest the reader right off the get go. He uses capital letters to emphasize words such as freedom, tax, and bind when first presenting his argument. He also introduces strong negative diction, such as celestial and impious, that will continue throughout his writing. Paine’s writing was simple and direct, and his arguments turned on one or two accessible principles and pursued persuasion through clarity and repetition. j

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