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Timothy Dwight
Timothy Dwight discusses the literary career of one of the most bitterly denounced and most passionately defended public figures of eighteenth century America. Grandson of Jonathan Edwards, President of Yale, Dwight kept alive, more than anyone else in the American enlightenment, the spirit of seventeenth-century New England. During the long and intense public debate on the nature and aims of the new republic, he was the most influential spokesman for the Federalist-Congregationalist point of view.
Professor Silverman's study describes Dwight's thinking on such major issues of his time as property rights, Deism, and the French Revolution, by analyzing in detail his major works: The Conquest of Canäan, Greenfield Hill, The Triumph of Infidelity, and the Travels; In New-England and New York. But for the most part it charts the evolution of Dwight's feelings about America. An ardent sponsor of Independence and national unity in his youth, he ended his life as the celebrant of Connecticut, in an America he felt would always be alien to him and to his class. In between, his feelings constantly changed in response to the political, social, and religious crises of his era.
Influential as a social theorist, as an educator, and as a theologian, Dwight was also outstanding among the group of poets known as the Connecticut Wits. As a poet and essayist he was deeply concerned with the problem of creating an American literature that would express the emerging American personality. By showing how for Dwight the literary problem of creating an American literature was inseparable from the social and political problems of creating America itself, this book tries to provide an approach to early American literature as a whole.
Professor Silverman's study describes Dwight's thinking on such major issues of his time as property rights, Deism, and the French Revolution, by analyzing in detail his major works: The Conquest of Canäan, Greenfield Hill, The Triumph of Infidelity, and the Travels; In New-England and New York. But for the most part it charts the evolution of Dwight's feelings about America. An ardent sponsor of Independence and national unity in his youth, he ended his life as the celebrant of Connecticut, in an America he felt would always be alien to him and to his class. In between, his feelings constantly changed in response to the political, social, and religious crises of his era.
Influential as a social theorist, as an educator, and as a theologian, Dwight was also outstanding among the group of poets known as the Connecticut Wits. As a poet and essayist he was deeply concerned with the problem of creating an American literature that would express the emerging American personality. By showing how for Dwight the literary problem of creating an American literature was inseparable from the social and political problems of creating America itself, this book tries to provide an approach to early American literature as a whole.
174 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1969
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