LITR 4231 Early American Literature Sample Research Posts 2014 (research post assignment) Research Post 2

Cristen Lauck

The Rhetoric of Thomas Paine

Thinking back on my first research post, I realized my frustration in the lack of results in finding an answer to the question proposed at the Thomas Paine conference. The primary question I was trying to find answers to was why different countries have tended to focus on different aspects of Paine and how can modern scholars reconcile these differences. While I did not find an answer to this precise question, my research did lead me to other interesting aspects of Paine’s work. For instance, my research for the first post lead me to realize that, although the different countries see Paine differently, they all commonly regard him for his distinctive use of language in one way or another. Specifically, Christina Vignone, Betsy Erkkila and Scott Cleary all spoke during the conferences about Paine’s powerful use of language. Realizing this, I decided to start my research with a new approach based on Paine’s use of rhetoric.

I began my search the same way I began my first post, by trying to find articles written by the speakers at the conference. And to my dismay, I again could not find anything of interest written by these speakers, so I began searching for articles about Paine’s writing style and his use of rhetoric. To do this, I typed the combination of “rhetoric” and “Paine” in Academic Search Complete and did have some success.

Immediately, I found one article titled “The Rhetoric of American Protest: Thomas Paine and the Education of Tom Joad” written by Kurt Hochenauer. In this article, Hochenauer compared both Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and Thomas Paine’s Common Sense to show how human emotion, specifically anger and rage, are at the center of revolutions. Hochenauer explained how each of these writers used human emotion to “mythologize rebellion and protest as the natural right of all Americans.” (393) In other words, Hochenauer said both Steinbeck and Paine used anger as the basis for revolution and that each writers’ use of emotionally charged rhetoric contributed to this idea. For instance, Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath is outraged by the injustice he sees around him and Paine’s American man as described in Common Sense is encouraged to be outraged by the cruelty of the British. Hochenauer said that, like Steinbeck’s Tom Joad, “Paine’s American uses his anger to benefit the public good.” (397) He said that “angry rhetoric . . . draws the American man together with his associates to fight in a common cause against established authority” (398). Hochenauer showed how this idea is evident in both Paine’s American man and Steinbeck’s Tom Joad. Hochenauer lastly pointed out that “Paine’s rhetoric posits a fictional American man who is emotionally self-determined” (395). He said that Paine, like Steinbeck, used personal emotional and outrage as a basis for revolution.

          After finding this initial article, I looked for others that might address Paine and his use of rhetoric in Academic Search Complete but did not find very much, so I typed in the same key words in JSTOR and found many more articles of interest. The first one that caught my eye was by John Turner and was titled "Burke, Paine, and the Nature of Language.” After reading the article, I was a little disappointed because it did not specifically address my question. Instead, Turner wrote about the differences between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine’s ideas of language.

Turner began his article by describing the general idea of language in the 18^th century stemming from John Locke’s theories. He said that both Burke and Paine followed a traditional understanding of language that began with Locke but then each developed their philosophies about language differently. Turner then described the differences in Burke and Locke’s understanding of language based on what Burke wrote in his Enquiry. He explained that “Locke’s interest lay primarily in the individual struggle to understand fact <and> Burke’s lay in the shared social experience of meaning” (43). He also said of Burke that he believed “the substitute has power in his own right by virtue of his position as a mediator” (42). In other words, Turner said that Burke believed substitutive language is authoritative in its own right because we humans have given it the power of representation. Turner then shifted his article to explain how Paine differed greatly in his understanding of the use of language by looking at what he wrote in The Age of Reason.

He explained that Paine differed greatly from Locke and Burke because he believed language should directly reflect nature instead of being a representation of it. In other words, Paine does not believe in the use of metaphors because they do not directly reflect what is being described. Turner quoted Paine saying, “Human rationality depends upon a proper constitutional balance between the three greatest faculties of imagination, judgment, and memory,” while dreaming “is the activity of imagination unchecked by either judgment or memory.” (49) Turner also contrasted Paine’s analogies to Burke’s metaphors showing how analogies are all based on science and nature and therefore do not go against his ideas of misrepresentative metaphors.  He also said that Paine “set the analytical transparency of good prose and the structured argument of scientific or mathematical demonstration.” (51) Although this article did not answer the question I was looking for, it was interesting, nonetheless, to understand why Paine used so many analogies in his writings.

Another article that looked like it might address Paine’s use of Rhetoric was titled "Tom Paine's Common Sense and Ours” and was written by Sophia Rosenfeld. This article focused on what Paine’s idea of common sense is. Rosenfeld begins her article saying she wrote it in order to review the “sources and consequences of Paine’s decision to call on this invisible entity ‘common sense’ as the rationale and name for the new political sensibility that he hoped to foster” (638). In it, Rosenfeld argues what Paine meant by “common sense” and said that it was his idea of an inherent human ability to judge for oneself what is right instead of a shared belief by all. She presented her argument by explaining what other 18^th-century writers meant when they said “common sense.” She said that “by the middle of the eighteenth century, the English phrase ‘common sense’ could be used to mean, at once, a basic ability to form clear perceptions and make elementary judgments about everyday matters” (641). Rosenfeld also explained that to Paine, “common sense” meant “that something is self-evidently true, that it requires no further reflection or analysis on anyone’s part.” (634) In other words, Paine believed “common sense” to mean a human ability to judge for oneself what is right and wrong and this new understanding is very important in studying Thomas Paine because it gives us an understanding of why his ideas were so radical. Because he gave everyone a right to common sense, Paine gave the people a legitimate way to criticize the British Government.

          Lastly, I found a fourth article that sounded promising which was written by Harry Hayden Clark and was titled "Toward a Reinterpretation of Thomas Paine." In this article, Clark opened by saying he was going to argue against Monsure Conway’s previous belief that Paine’s political thought evolved from his early Quaker education (133). He said instead of his Quaker upbringing, Paine was mainly influenced by the Enlightenment and deistic philosophy. Clark said that Paine’s political philosophy came out of his belief and knowledge in scientific deism and enlightenment (133-34). He then systematically laid out his argument for showing how scientific deism was the basis for Paine’s writings on religion, politics, economics, social services, education and literary composition (134). Clark quoted Paine’s The Age of Reason saying Paine argued against “the Christian system of faith, including in it the whimsical account of the creation, the strange story of Eve, the snake, and the apple; the amphibious idea of a man-god; the corporeal idea of the death of god; the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the Christian system of arithmetic, that three are one and one is three” in favor of more deistic beliefs (135). Here, Clark showed that Paine’s primary objective in his writings was to combat these ideas. Clark later quoted Paine’s The Age of Reason showing his belief in deism when he said “the creator of man is the Creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face” (143). Throughout the entire article, Clark explained that Paine’s attitudes and reasoning’s are proving what deism is against, not Quakerism, which is what Conway had previously argued.

          Although Hochenauer’s article came closest to addressing Paine’s exemplary use of rhetoric, each of these articles are interesting and enlightening in their own way. I had just hoped I would find more specific information on Paine’s rhetoric. Nevertheless, I will continue my search to find out why Thomas Paine was so influential in the various countries and for different reasons. I have not given up hope yet.

Works Cited

Clark, Harry Hayden. "Toward a Reinterpretation of Thomas Paine." American Literature 5.2 (1933): 133-45. JSTOR. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.

Hochenauer, Kurt. "The Rhetoric of American Protest: Thomas Paine and the Education of Tom Joad." Midwest Quarterly 35.4 (1994): 392-400. Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 Mar. 2014.

Rosenfeld, Sophia. "Tom Paine's Common Sense and Ours.” The William and Mary Quarterly 65.4 (2008): 633-68. JSTOR. Web. 22 Mar. 2014.

Turner, John. "Burke, Paine, and the Nature of Language." The Yearbook of English Studies 19.The French Revolution in English Literature and Art Special Number (1989): 36-53. JSTOR. Web. 1 Mar. 2014.