Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Instituto de Letras
Departamento de Línguas Modernas
LET002276 - Literatura Norte Americana I Turma: U Semestre: 2018/1
Profª Marta Oliveira
Fernanda Correa Soldatelli

Rodríguez García, José María. “The ‘Memo’ pages of Franklin's Autobiography.”

Miscelánea: A journal of English and American studies ​18 (1997): 267-280.

The “Memo” pages

● Around two letters from Abel James and Benjamin Vaughan
● Function: ​mise en abyme
● Life writing as conservative instrument of reproduction for transmitting values through
print technologies and disciplinary means for forging Americans

Franklin’s narrative
● Discussion: How the Autobiography use certain characteristics of Puritan writing to
create an illusion of sincerity and moral integrity that is in fact part of a false rhetoric of
seduction
● Adaptation of the puritan code to the demands of a more progressive age
○ Addresses one of his children explicitly
○ Insists on the didactic dimension
● Emphasizes the pleasure he obtains in relating his own life
● Transformation of success, first into “duty” and an “obligation”, and later into a sign of
divine favor (greatest rhetorical feat)

Part I
● Conventional letter of advice by an experienced father to his son → ​appealing to the bond
loyalty between father and the successful son
● In 1771 as an attempt by a father to blackmail his influential son → after 1783 designed
to discipline all young Americans
 Franklin → WRITING ABILITY → Father of the Revolution
Self-making → Nation-building
Life writing → America’s identity

Autobiographical work as an institution

● Wlad Godzich: “An institution is first and foremost a guiding idea, the idea of some
determined goal to be reached for the common weal…” (1987: 156)
● Franklin institutionalized a model of America biography: particular existence → general
value

Progress of a nation and an individual lives according to preconceived plan

● A plan to conduct his life → a model for interpreting the life of individual Americans
● A plan to build a nation → a model for interpreting the history of the American nation
● A plan to write his life → a model for interpreting the craft of American letters