Teaching the Article
Exercise 1, The Enlightenment: High and Rural
Read the following excerpt from Charles Sellers's The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (pp. 29-31). How does Sellers's description of the world of colonial Americans (i.e., "peasant forbears," "at the mercy of nature," "folk convictions," "animistic magic and mystery") make it seem inhospitable to the Enlightenment as it is traditionally defined?
A. The High Enlightenment
Consider the images below. How do they reflect the traditional, high-culture, urban, and elite understanding of the Enlightenment?
Images:
Benjamin Franklin at the French court |
Nassau Hall, the College of New Jersey at Princeton (1860) |
An East Perspective View of the City of Philadelphia ([1778]-c.1790) |
B. The Rural World of Philip Vickers Fithian
Consider the images below. How might Sellers interpret them? With Philip Vickers Fithian's experience in mind, how do you interpret these colonial scenes familiar to him. How did Fithian experience the Enlightenment in these familiar settings?