American Literature: 18th Century & Early Republic

Vocabulary study guide covering major movements, authors, texts, and rhetorical terms of 18th-century American literature and the Early Republic.

Great Awakening

A revival of religious faith roughly between 1735 and 1750 characterized by emotion and personal conversion, with Jonathan Edwards serving as its major author.

Enlightenment / Age of Reason

An intellectual movement emphasizing observation, evidence, logic, natural law, free inquiry, and rights, strongly influenced by thinkers like John Locke and Isaac Newton.

Deism

The belief that God creates an orderly world governed by natural laws that humans can study through reason, often illustrated by the clockmaker analogy.

Neoclassicism

Art and writing inspired by classical Greece and Rome, emphasizing order, balance, symmetry, polish, and formal poetic structure.

Jonathan Edwards

Puritan/Calvinist minister and major Great Awakening figure who merged traditional doctrine with ideas of emotion and sensation to move audiences toward salvation through fear and feeling.

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

A 1741 sermon by Jonathan Edwards structured around a scriptural model, reason, and application, designed to provoke emotional conversion by making hell feel immediate through vivid imagery.

Half-Way Covenant

A form of partial church membership whose adherents Edwards addressed in his preaching, warning that partial affiliation or ordinary good behavior does not guarantee salvation.

Benjamin Franklin

Printer, businessman, inventor, diplomat, and Enlightenment thinker who authored Poor Richard's Almanack and promoted education, industry, reason, and worldly virtue.

"The Way to Wealth"

A text by Benjamin Franklin in which Father Abraham recites Poor Richard's sayings at an auction to advise buyers against idleness, pride, and folly by practicing industry, humility, and frugality.

Father Abraham

The fictional speaker in Benjamin Franklin's frame narrative in "The Way to Wealth" who delivers practical, sermon-like advice drawn from Poor Richard's maxims.

"Speech of Polly Baker"

A satirical work by Benjamin Franklin in which a fictional woman prosecuted for bearing children outside of wedlock critiques the sexual double standard and unfair Puritan laws.

Thomas Paine

English-born revolutionary pamphleteer and Deist who encouraged American independence in Common Sense and criticized organized religion in The Age of Reason.

"Common Sense" (1776)

A revolutionary pamphlet by Thomas Paine written in everyday prose using logic (logos), emotion (pathos), and analogies to argue that American independence from British rule is necessary and natural.

"The Age of Reason"

A text by Thomas Paine that affirms God's existence while challenging organized religion and secondhand revelation as mere hearsay, advocating instead for the study of nature and astronomy.

Thomas Jefferson

Virginia planter, lawyer, and Enlightenment thinker influenced by Locke, Newton, and Bacon who drafted the Declaration of Independence and advocated religious liberty while enslaving people.

"Declaration of Independence" (1776)

A document drafted by Thomas Jefferson that asserts natural rights, equality, and government by consent, structuring grievances against King George III using anaphora to declare political separation.

"Notes on the State of Virginia," Query XVII (Religion)

A text by Thomas Jefferson arguing that religious beliefs and freedom of conscience are natural rights that governments should not coerce or punish, famously stating, "It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

James Madison

Virginia political thinker and co-author of The Federalist Papers under the pen name Publius who designed constitutional solutions to manage the effects of factions.

Publius

The shared pen name under which James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay published The Federalist Papers.

"Federalist No. 10"

An essay by James Madison arguing that the harmful effects of factions are best controlled not by eliminating liberty, but by establishing an extended, representative republic.

Faction

According to James Madison, a group of citizens united by a shared passion or economic interest that operates contrary to the rights of others or the common good.

Pure Democracy vs. Republic

The distinction in Madison's thought where pure democracy involves direct citizen governance, whereas a republic utilizes elected representatives to filter and refine public views across a broader territory.

Phillis Wheatley

West African-born poet who was enslaved in Boston, mastered Latin and literature, and published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), combining Christianity with neoclassical form.

"On Being Brought from Africa to America"

A poem by Phillis Wheatley written in heroic couplets that examines race, Christianity, and spiritual salvation, arguing that Black people can be spiritually redeemed.

"To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works"

A neoclassical poem by Phillis Wheatley using elevated language to celebrate visual art, imaginative poetic creation, Christian heaven, and artistic immortality.

Philip Freneau

Known as the "Poet of the American Revolution," an anti-British writer and editor of the National Gazette whose work bridges Enlightenment Deism and early Romanticism.

"The Wild Honeysuckle"

A nature poem by Philip Freneau written in iambic tetrameter with an ABABCC rhyme scheme that uses apostrophe to reflect on the beauty and mortality of an unnoticed flower.

"The Indian Burying Ground"

A poem in ballad meter by Philip Freneau where Romantic feelings and imaginative notions of the afterlife challenge strict Enlightenment rational certainty.

"On the Religion of Nature"

A poem by Philip Freneau asserting that moral goodness and natural religion exist independent of institutional churches, suggesting an innate moral sense at birth.

Pathos

A rhetorical appeal directed to the audience's emotions, such as Jonathan Edwards invoking fear or Thomas Paine appealing to sympathy and liberty.

Logos

A rhetorical appeal grounded in logic, evidence, and systematic reasoning, as utilized by Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.

Anaphora

A rhetorical device involving the repetition of a word or phrase at the start of successive clauses, illustrated by Jefferson's repeated use of "He has" in the Declaration's grievances.

Satire

The use of humor, irony, or exaggeration to expose and criticize societal shortcomings, human follies, or unfair laws, as seen in Benjamin Franklin's writings.

Horatian Satire

A form of gentle, lighthearted satire that playfully mocks human follies rather than attacking vice with harshness, utilized by Franklin in "The Way to Wealth."

Persona

A fictional speaker or identity created and assumed by an author, such as Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard or Polly Baker.

Frame Narrative

A literary structure in which an outer story contains one or more embedded inner stories, as exemplified by Father Abraham's speech in "The Way to Wealth."

Apostrophe

A poetic figure of speech in which the speaker directly addresses an absent person, an abstract quality, or an inanimate object, as in Freneau addressing the honeysuckle.

Heroic Couplet

A classical verse form consisting of rhyming pairs of lines written in iambic pentameter, commonly utilized by Phillis Wheatley.

Tabula Rasa

The Enlightenment concept of the human mind as a "blank slate" at birth, possessing no innate ideas prior to experience.