Shaping Knowledge in Early Anglo-American Writing
David Read
New World, Known World examines the works of four writers closely associated with the early period of English colonization, from 1624 to 1649: John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia, William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan, and Roger Williams’s A Key into the Language of America (in conjunction with another of Williams’s major works, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution). David Read addresses these texts as examples of what he refers to as “individual knowledge projects”— the writers’ attempts to shape raw information and experience into patterns and narratives that can be compared with and assessed against others from a given society’s fund of accepted knowledge.
Read argues that the body of Western knowledge in the period immediately before the development of well-defined scientific disciplines is primarily the work of individuals functioning in relative isolation, rather than institutions working in concert. The European colonization of other regions in the same period exposes in a way few historical situations do both the complexity and the uncertainty involved in the task of producing knowledge.
Read treats each work as the project of a specific mind, reflecting a high degree of intentionality and design, and not simply as a collection of documentary evidence to be culled in the service of a large-scale argument. He shows that each author adds a distinct voice to the experience of North American colonization and that each articulates it in ways that are open to analysis in terms of form, style, convention, rhetorical strategies, and applications of metaphor and allegory.
By applying the tools of literary interpretation to colonial texts, Read reaches a fuller understanding of the immediate consequences of English colonization in North America on the culture’s base of knowledge. Students and scholars of early modern colonialism and transatlantic studies, as well as those with interests in seventeenth-century American and English literature, should find this book of particular value.
About the author
David Read is Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri–Columbia. He is the author of Temperate Conquests: Spenser and the Spanish New World.
Ralph Frasca
In Benjamin Franklin’s Printing Network, Ralph Frasca explores Franklin’s partnerships and business relationships with printers and their impact on the early American press. Besides analyzing the structure of the network, Frasca addresses two equally important questions: How did Franklin establish this informal group? What were his motivations for doing so?
This network grew to be the most prominent and geographically extensive of the early American printing organizations, lasting from the 1720s until the 1790s. Stretching from New England to the West Indies, it comprised more than two dozen members, including such memorable characters as the Job-like James Parker, the cunning Francis Childs, the malcontent Benjamin Mecom, the vengeful Benjamin Franklin Bache, the steadfast David Hall, and the deranged Anthony Armbruster.
Franklin’s network altered practices in both the European and the American colonial printing trades by providing capital and political influence to set up workers as partners and associates. As an economic entity and source of mutual support, the network was integral to the success of many eighteenth-century printers, as well as to the development of American journalism.
Frasca argues that one of Franklin’s principal motivations in establishing the network was his altruistic desire to assist Americans in their efforts to be virtuous. Using a variety of sources, Frasca shows that Franklin viewed virtue as a path to personal happiness and social utility. Franklin intended for his network of printers to teach virtue and encourage its adoption. The network would disseminate his moral truths to a mass audience, and this would in turn further his own political, economic, and moral ambitions.
By exploring Franklin’s printing network and addressing these questions, this work fills a substantial void in the historical treatment of Franklin’s life. Amateur historians and professional scholars alike will welcome Frasca’s clear and capable treatment of this subject.
About the Author
Ralph Frasca is Associate Professor of Mass Communication at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of the “Saturday Globe” and American War Reporting: The Mexican-American War.
ISBN 0-8262-1614-5
312 pages
6 1/8 x 9 1/4
bibliography, index, illustrations
$44.95s
2005 Edition
Allen D. Carden (1792-1859)
Compiled by Wings of Song
With a history dating back to 1820, The Missouri Harmony was the most popular of all frontier shape-note tune books. The 185 songs in the collection were favorites used in Protestant churches and singing schools, and many were already deeply rooted in American culture by the time of its first publication. The story of the book is the story of a burgeoning nation, with its origins in a St. Louis school (where it was introduced by singing master Allen Carden) and its spread along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. It's said that even Abraham Lincoln and his sweetheart Ann Rutledge sang from The Missouri Harmony at her father's tavern in Illinois.
Compilations such as The Missouri Harmony not only helped teach midwesterners to read music but also carried a uniquely American heritage of shaped notes, a system of musical notation that grew out of the singing school movement in eighteenth-century New England. Furthermore, this heritage would be, according to composer Virgil Thomson, "the musical basis of almost everything we make, of Negro spirituals, of cowboy songs, of popular ballads, of blues, of hymns, of doggerel ditties, and all our operas and symphonies." Yet, despite its significance, the tune book was until now unavailable to contemporary choral and church music groups, including the thriving community of shape-note folksingers.
This updated and expanded version of Allen D. Carden's 1820 volume now contains more than 300 pages of original and traditional music compositions collected by the St. Louis Shape Note Singers. An introductory text explains and illuminates the shape-note tradition and the history of the book. With this compilation, published nearly two hundred years after its inception, the heritage of a very different, yet ever influential, America thrives, and its songs, rich with our country's history, live on.
The nonprofit organization Wings of Song promotes and preserves a cappella shape-note singing in the traditional folk vernacular. It is the formal operating arm of the St. Louis Shape Note Singers and sponsors events such as singing schools and the annual Missouri Convention.
ISBN 1-883982-54-5352 pages 10 x 7, 10 b&w illustrations, indexes
$29.95tAvailable June 2005
Carl J. Ekberg
"This valuable study will at long last rescue the Vallés from the shadows of the better-known Chouteaus of St. Louis and bring Ste. Genevieve's preeminent French Creole family the recognition it rightly deserves. François Vallé's story is remarkable. This book is characterized by a richness of detail that carries the reader into another time and place."--William E. Foley
In François Vallé
and His World, Carl Ekberg provides a fascinating biography of François
Vallé (1716-1783), placing him within the context of his place and time.
Vallé, who was born in Beauport, Canada, immigrated to Upper Louisiana
(the Illinois Country) as a penniless common laborer sometime during the early
1740s. Engaged in agriculture, lead mining, and the Indian trade, he ultimately
became the wealthiest and most powerful individual in Upper Louisiana, although
he never learned to read or write.
Ekberg focuses on Upper Louisiana in colonial times, long before Lewis and Clark
arrived in the Mississippi River valley and before American sovereignty had
reached the eastern bank of the Mississippi. He vividly captures the ambience
of life in the eighteenth-century frontier agricultural society that Vall‚ inhabited, shedding new light on the French and Spanish colonial regimes in
Louisiana and on the Mississippi River frontier before the Americans arrived.
Based entirely on primary source documents--wills and testaments, parish registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials, and Spanish administrative correspondence--found in archives ranging from St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve to New Orleans and Seville, François Vallé and His World traces not only the life of François Vallé and the lives of his immediate family members, but also the lives of his slaves. In doing so, it provides a portrait of Missouri's very first black families, something that has never before been attempted. Ekberg also analyzes how the illiterate Vallé became the richest person in all of Upper Louisiana, and how he rose in the sociopolitical hierarchy to become an important servant of the Spanish monarchy.
François Vallé and His World provides a useful corrective to the fallacious notion that Missouri's history began with the arrival of Lewis and Clark at the turn of the nineteenth century. Anyone with an interest in colonial history or the history of the Mississippi River valley will find this book of great value.
About the Author
Carl J. Ekberg is Professor Emeritus of History at Illinois State University.
He is the author of several books, including French Roots in the Illinois Country:
The Mississippi Frontier in Colonial Times and Colonial Ste. Genevieve: An Adventure
on the Mississippi Frontier. He resides in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
Missouri Biography Series, William E. Foley, Editor