I thought the the Franklin reading was very interesting. I liked how Franklin used wit to illustrate the colonies' complaints of England. I wondered how accurate was his portrayal of the American colony-England relationship. Was England really doing all those things? I questioned his accuracy because, he was American. Also I wondered who his audience was. Was it written for Americans? Or the English? If it was written for an American audience than it was probably used to generate animosity for England. Because many American felt that England had wronged them, and the essay reaffirmed these beliefs. Or maybe the purpose of the essay was to approach English administrators in a different way, by using wit.
Also I didn't understand why he capitalize words wrong. He didn't just capitalize the words at the beginning of a sentence, and proper nouns, but other words also. Was it to add emphasis or was that just the writing style of the 1700's?
Overall I thought it was an interesting read. what are your views?
Ashley Hill
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I too thought it was a very interesting reading. As for the capitalization, I think it may have just been the style at the time, seeing as how it was all nouns that were capitalized. I think they do that in German as well? Correct me if I am wrong. Perhaps if it was not the general neoclassic period style (which would be my guess), it could have been an influence from his interest in German (the history did say that he could read, write and speak German fluently). At first I didn't realize that this was one of his pretty much purely satirical pieces but it soon became clear that his intention was to discredit the English style of governing her American colonies. I think it is a good question to ask who his audience was, and I think it may have been both English and American, though primarily and initially English as it was his London correspondence, even though he was actually in England some of the time between 1757 and 1775. I noticed also that more than being many different ways to "reduce a great empire to a small one," it seemed to just be many ways to provoke the people into revolt (excepting, of course, those few early rules on where to break one's empire).
I also wanted to know what you made of the end of the third rule- it confused me a little at the end in where he was trying to go with it. And, just as a bit of an aside, I noticed he was rather fond of ther word "odious." He used it quite a few times, which I found interesting because most authors seem to have certain words that they like to repeat, and apparently his is "odious" (at least in this work).
~Olivia
I unfortunately thought it was fairly dull, honestly I was expecting more from Benjamin Franklin. It was an intelligent and logically written piece, though I got more out of it's historical aspects than the literature value. It was a political document and not a comedic or satirical piece and thus my criticisms are slightly out of place.
The long, dull paragraphs certainly kill any satirical value it has by our standards. Its effectiveness in the neoclassic era would have been better, though the effect on the general public could have been greater if the ideas had been condensed. Since the letter is to the "Public Advertiser" in London, I would expect the purpose to be to influence the populace and in turn, the government.
Although I may not call the reading interesting, I will admit that I found parts amusing and it was able to hold my attention. I agree with Mike that the paragraphs would have carried a greater effect on the general public if they had been condensed, but I think that the piece would have lost something if this were done.
I thought one line in particular depicted a view that was later used in developing the country- "Strength of Government depends on the Opinion of the People," however, it seems a little different than what we are used to hearing. We usually hear how Government comes from the consent of the people, but I thought that this was an interesting variation. I was just wondering if anyone thinks that this line would have had any different interpretations during the time period.
-Kelsey
Post a Comment