LITR 4231 Early American Literature Research Posts 2014 (research post assignment) Research Post 1

Cristen Lauck

Who is Paine?

Throughout this semester, I have focused my research on Thomas Paine because I am preparing to write my Master's thesis on him. A lead resource that has started my research has been a review of a conference in 2013 led by the Thomas Paine Society. This conference highlighted and identified the questions and issues that are present in the current critique of Paine. One of the primary questions that was debated at the conference is why different countries tend to focus on different aspects of Paine, and how can modern scholars reconcile these differences? The conference itself gives very few definitive answers as to what Paine’s political thought was and what he should be remembered for. The conference does, however, highlight the issue that because Paine is a transnational writer, he is viewed differently by many societies and contrarily valued for his writings. For instance, the British tend to see Paine mostly as a political activist who wrote Rights of Man, the Americans focus on his role in the American Revolution and his contribution of Common Sense, and the French tend to focus on his religious beliefs in Age of Reason. The conference itself gives very few answers as to why he is valued differently by different countries and only opens the door for more questions about Paine.

To begin my research this semester, I had a difficult time figuring out where to start. Because this article was a review of a conference, there was no works cited for me to trace back information. So, instead of following a works cited page to find leads to these questions, I began my research by identifying the keynote speakers of the conference and researching to find their most recent articles in an attempt to locate their current findings. To my dismay, I could find very little that was written by the actual conference presenters. Perhaps it is because the conference was too recent and the speakers have not published their works yet or because both JSTOR and Academic Search Complete are limited in their choices of articles. However, I was able to find a couple of articles by the writers of the conference review, Betsy Erkkila and Edward Larkin. So I began with reading their articles to see what information I could find.

Betsy Erkkila’s article which I found on JSTOR was not directly related to the question at hand, which is why do different societies remember or focus on different works by Paine as opposed to viewing him as a complete writer. It did, however, relatedly answer the question why historians and Literature majors have intentionally disregarded each other. In her essay titled “Critical History,” Erkkila explains that in her experience as a double-major graduate student of English and History at UC-Berkeley, she noticed and questioned why the English and History departments refused to recognize each other’s importance. She says that she understood this disconnect to be the result of both disciplines’ resistance to post-structural theories and says that the Literary professions have long resisted looking at literature in historical contexts because of a fear that “The ‘historical turn’ will polute the purity of literature” and similarly that the “historians fear that the ‘linguistic turn’ will erode the objective and factual grounds of the historical profession” (Erkkila 359). Like Erkkila, I have wondered at this disconnect between the two professions and as evident in the conference review, this is still an ongoing debate and problem. I was just hoping there would be more of an answer as to why Paine is viewed differently by different counties but the article itself was very interesting. 

I also found another article written by a conference presenter who co-wrote the conference review, Edward Larkin. His article, which I also found on JSTOR, is titled “Inventing an American Public: Thomas Paine, the Pennsylvania Magazine, and American Revolutionary Political Discourse.” His article similarly did not answer my particular question but was still very informative. In his article, Larkin explains how Paine became popular as a political writer and influential to the American Revolution. Larkin explains that Paine’s work as the editor of the Pennsylvania magazine both created and shaped his audience. He says that in order for Paine to have been successful as an editor, he had to identify his audience and then attempt to reinvent it (258). Larkin explains that Paine chose his audience by speaking directly to the common, less-educated people and addressed them by writing extensively though analogy and metaphor. Larkin explains how this was genius on Paine’s part because he was able to address the majority of Pennsylvanians who were “laborers and uneducated” (259). Larkin says that “the politicization of the mass of Philadelphians . . . was the most important development in Philadelphia’s political life in the decades before independence” (259). And Larkin attributes this political awakening of the common people to Paine and his use of allegory. Although, this article did not answer the question of why different countries view Paine differently, it did shed light on the way in which Americans have come to know Paine as a political revolutionary.

Because I did not find exactly what I was looking for by researching the conference presenters, I decided to continue my search by specifically looking for the transatlantic aspect of Paine’s career. I started by research first by typing in “Transatlantic” and “Paine” in academic search complete. Not much was found other than book reviews which are extremely helpful and will be useful for my thesis research; they were, however, not exactly what I was needing for this article review. So, I instead typed the same key words in JSTOR and was able to find good articles.

The first title I noticed and thought would be interesting to read was Robert Lamb’s article titled “Liberty, Equality, and the Boundaries of Ownership: Thomas Paine’s Theory of Property Right.” I initially knew this article would not answer the prevailing question at hand but I thought it would be interesting to read nonetheless. The article itself is very specific in its account of Paine and, as the title suggests, involves his ideas of property rights. Lamb explains in his article that Paine was unique in his theory of property rights and deserving of greater recognition. Lamb criticizes current scholars who disregard Paine as a political theorist and say his political theories are “schizophrenic” in thought (483). Lamb bases his ideas on Paine’s Agrarian Justice and shows how Paine is able to successfully reconcile a person’s right to liberty while simultaneously supporting equality through his property rights theory. Lamb points out that Paine’s political views are traditionally disregarded because he is viewed as being undecided and have been supported both by American Libertarians as well as British Egalitarians.  Lamb explains that this differing view of Paine is primarily because American Revolutionaries have focused on Common Sense, whereas the British have focused on The Rights of Man. He then goes on to explain that these different views of Paine can be reconciled if we look at his thoughts on property rights. He says that Paine’s theories are unique because he identifies 3 types of property (natural, artificial or acquired, and inherited artificial). Lamb then goes on to describe the different types and explains that Paine believes some property can be taxed for the greater good of society but other types of property cannot be taxed because property ownership is a natural right to man. This article was extremely interesting to me on a personal level but still only partially answered why different countries viewed him differently and then goes on to say that we shouldn’t think this way.

The second title that caught my eye was Jason Solinger’s “Thomas Paine’s Continental Mind”. I thought this article would definitely have the answer to my question. To my disappointment, it only partially did. Solinger says that Paine saw himself as a “man of the world” (593) with no real ties to any particular country, which is why he was eventually disowned by all the countries he resided in. Solinger points out that Paine was “Forced out of England, imprisoned in France, and written out of the histories of the United States” (593). He attributes Paine’s unattached attitude to the prevailing idea of a cosmopolitan man of the enlightenment. Solinger explains that the idea of a world-traveling intellectual was a highlight of the Enlightenment and which Paine was an advocate for. He points out that Paine frequently uses the phrase of a “continental mind” when criticizing the imperial attitudes of the island-bound British in favor of the Enlightened American colonists. Solinger explains that Paine was rejected by the different countries he once called home because he was a self-proclaimed man of the world and not bound by the limits of a country or national loyalty. This article comes the closest to answering my question but still leaves a lot unanswered. It explains why Paine was not loyal to any one country but still does not answer why each country has decided to primarily focus on one of his works and disregarded the others. Nevertheless, it is a step closer to understanding why Paine continues to be a challenge to many Historians and Literary scholars alike. 

Works Cited

Erkkila, Betsy. "Critical History." American Quarterly 50.2 (1998): 358-64. JSTOR. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.

Lamb, Robert. "Liberty, Equality, and the Boundaries of Ownership: Thomas Paine's Theory of Property Rights." The Review of Politics 72.03 (2010): 483-511. JSTOR. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.

Larkin, Edward. "Inventing an American Public: Thomas Paine, the "Pennsylvania Magazine," and American Revolutionary Political Discourse." Early American Literature 33.3 (1998): 250-76. JSTOR. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.

Solinger, Jason D. "Thomas Paine’s Continental Mind." Early American Literature 45.3 (2010): 593-617. JSTOR. Web. 5 Mar. 2014.