DECLARING INDEPENDENCE

The Declaration of Independence itself will be our central text for this class. Most of you will have read this text before, but take the time to read it carefully. It’s a tremendously important text, and we can learn a great deal from a close and careful reading of it. Below are some issues that you may want to consider as you read.

Consider the assumptions shaping the text. What political, social, and theological assumptions underlie this document? Where in the text are those assumptions revealed? For example, pay close attention to the "truths" which are taken to be "self evident" (652). What are they? What do they have in common? Are there other assumptions that underlie these? For example, how does the notion of the "Creator" articulated here fit in with the texts we’ve been reading over the last few weeks?

Consider as well the list of grievances against England. What kinds of issues are described? Which grievances receive the most emphasis?

Of course, I’d like you to pay particularly close attention to the rhetoric of this document. Consider the images used, the comparisons suggested, the rhetorical figures employed. Note also the grammatical structure of Jefferson’s sentences; he controls his syntax very carefully, and you should try to figure out how and why. Pay attention to verb tenses and to manipulations of the active and passive voice. You might even try to diagram the opening sentence of the declaration. At the very least, identify its subject and predicate.

The Norton Anthology reprints the Declaration as it appears in Jefferson’s autobiography, complete with annotations to indicate the changes made by Congress before the document was signed. Consider these changes. What issues receive different emphasis in the Congressional version?

Finally, think for a minute or two about what it means to have a founding text of this nature. What are the implications for us, as students of American literature, that the nation whose literature we’ve been studying was almost literally called into being in a textual act?

We’ll also be discussing excerpts from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Pay particular attention to the differences in rhetorical emphasis that distinguish Common Sense and The Declaration of Independence. Do Paine and Jefferson represent the issue of independence in the same terms? How might you explain the differences between these texts?

We’ll also consider selected letters of John and Abigail Adams, many of them written in the summer of 1776. What perspective do these letters offer on the idea of independence and its declaration? See these links for an exchange about the role of women that the Norton Anthology omits.

• Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March - 5 April 1776
• Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 April 1776
• Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, 7 - 9 May 1776

Also, consider the culture of letter writing. When we read The Coquette in a few weeks, we’ll be thinking about letter writing and the epistolary novel.

Finally, we'll look briefly at Judith Sargent Murray's "On the Equality of the Sexes," published in The Massachusetts Magazine, or , Monthly Museum of Knowledge and Rational Entertainment in March and April 1790. What strategies does Murray use to make her argument? Does her rhetoric resemble that of other writers we've been reading? What kinds of equality interest her?