We are beginning in The Enlightenment, personally one of my favorite movements.
But like everything else human-made, The Enlightenment only exists because of what came before.
Sir Issac Newton- an early Enlightenment thinker and author who was also a pioneer and staple in the Scientific Revolution (the precursor to The Enlightenment) famously wrote to his rival, Robert Hooke, “if I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants”.
This is my favorite quote to begin our readings with, because as we shall see throughout the course, artists, much like scientists and technologists, are influenced by and build upon what came before.
As I’ve said in the previous section about ‘How to Read American Literature,” we are all products of our time.
So- American LIterature began with the early Native American mythology and oral traditions, knotted-line record-keeping, pictographs, and other structural artifacts and took off with the quest for a cheaper and safer route to the Orient, which sent the sailors and explorers west, across the sea.
The Age of Discovery kick-started the [early] modern era and flung Europe out of the Middle Ages, flaming the Renaissance into overdrive, which started the Reformation, which led to the Scientific Revolution, which led to the Enlightenment.
So when we begin with The Enlightenment, we must remember that it couldn’t have happened without what came before.
What’s neat is if we traced the movements backward, it was the Crusades that led to The Age of the Discovery, and then what began the Crusades? It’s one long complicated train of interconnected events that brings us to who are today, and we are going to read only a little of what came before.
