Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126

Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127

By Dr. Shrout

The pieces by Warner and Stout for this week both concern the creation of new communities – one through print and the other through speech. These are simultaneous processes, but a reader of either article on its own might be forgiven for thinking that print developed separately from oral revolutionary culture, and oral revolutionary culture separately from print.

Cordelia helpfully points out that Franklin, though written about as a seminal “man of letters” might be a product, rather than a catalyst for the rise of a “republic of letters” (the same might be said of George Whitfield, the famous Great Awakening preacher). I hope we can explore in class, though, the question of whether literary reactions are inevitable in a largely literate culture? Under what circumstances do we expect oppressed populations to respond with text, and under what circumstances to we expect them to respond orally, or with violence?

Warner certainly presents a world where reacting literarily is the norm, but I think that Stout helpfully reminds us that other forms of resistance and popular culture were also possible. I also think we might (in coming weeks) need to unpack the idea of the press as a cohesive body. Certainly the reading for next Tuesday will show that there were many different circuits of Revolutionary communication.