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Franklin's Autobiography and the Credibility of Personality

Franklin's Autobiography and the Credibility of Personality BE N JA M I N F R A N K L I N ' S AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE C R E D I B I L I T Y OF P E RSON A L I T Y JENNIFER JORDAN BAKER Vassar College fter reading the first installment of Benjamin Franklin's memoirs, Benjamin Vaughan concluded that his friend's life story would offer a fitting paradigm of American upward social mobility. ``All that has happened to you,'' he wrote to Franklin in 1783, is ``connected with the detail of the manners and situation of a rising people'' (Autobiography 59). Vaughan's insistence that Franklin's was a prototypical story of success and self-making suggested that the memoir was representative of the American experience. While the limitations of this prototype are clear to the modern reader--Vaughan spoke specifically of a ``rising people'' of Euro-American males with access to economic opportunities not available to others--critics have recognized nonetheless a presumption of representativeness in this text. In the words of Mitchell Breitwieser, Franklin ``aspires to representative personal universality,'' creating a rhetorical personality by cultivating ``characteristics he felt were in accord with what the age demanded'' (Breitwieser 171). Franklin's Autobiography, according to William Spengemann, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Early American Literature University of North Carolina Press

Franklin's Autobiography and the Credibility of Personality

Early American Literature , Volume 35 (3) – Nov 1, 2000

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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by The University of North Carolina Press.
ISSN
1534-147X
Publisher site
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Abstract

BE N JA M I N F R A N K L I N ' S AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND THE C R E D I B I L I T Y OF P E RSON A L I T Y JENNIFER JORDAN BAKER Vassar College fter reading the first installment of Benjamin Franklin's memoirs, Benjamin Vaughan concluded that his friend's life story would offer a fitting paradigm of American upward social mobility. ``All that has happened to you,'' he wrote to Franklin in 1783, is ``connected with the detail of the manners and situation of a rising people'' (Autobiography 59). Vaughan's insistence that Franklin's was a prototypical story of success and self-making suggested that the memoir was representative of the American experience. While the limitations of this prototype are clear to the modern reader--Vaughan spoke specifically of a ``rising people'' of Euro-American males with access to economic opportunities not available to others--critics have recognized nonetheless a presumption of representativeness in this text. In the words of Mitchell Breitwieser, Franklin ``aspires to representative personal universality,'' creating a rhetorical personality by cultivating ``characteristics he felt were in accord with what the age demanded'' (Breitwieser 171). Franklin's Autobiography, according to William Spengemann,

Journal

Early American LiteratureUniversity of North Carolina Press

Published: Nov 1, 2000

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