설교, 자서전, 에세이: 미국 개인주의 담론의 기원
Sermon, Autobiography, and Essay: The Origin of American Individualistic Discourses
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This research attempts to critically elucidate the discursive impact of American puritan genre of “conversion narrative” and “spiritual autobiography” upon making the modern discourse of American individualism and democracy, by adopting a genealogical methodology that reconstructs the trajectories of American selfhood: from the original conception of “the communal selfhood” in Cotton Mather’s autobiography, Paterna, and its 18th century version of “a secular individual” in Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, in contradistinction with Emerson’s re-examinantion of representative individuality in his essays. Cotton Mather’s Paterna is an interesting document in that it attempts to presents itself as a model discourse depicting the birth of public spirit in the shape of a personal narrative. Paterna is an autobiographical sermon, as it were, whose narrative structure aims at achieving instructional purpose for the descendants and exemplary life for the public in general. Mather’s autobiography, however, fails to be an imitable model life for the general public while succeeding as a sort of American hagiography. Unlike Benjamin Franklin, Mather does not intend to create an exemplary figure for popular individuals. Rather his ideal American puritan is much too unapproachable and inaccessible. On the other hand, Franklin’s Autobiography takes advantage of, in its own ways, the discursive structures of puritan conversion and sermon, transforming them into sub-narratives for the justification of the enlightened public individual whose secular success story is represented by the ideal of anti-elite self-made man and practically-oriented public mask. Franklin's self-made man, unfettered from both the age-old puritan communal selfhood and the enlightened publicity of the 18th century political individuals, incarnates the modern ideal of American individualism in its radical break from anything authoritative and ideological. In short, American discourse of modern individualism starts from the specter of puritan communal selfhood in Paterna and completes itself in the political, public, self-fashioning subject in Franklin’s Autobiography, transforming itself into the ideal of democratic individualism still predominant in our time. But Emersonian deconstruction of Matherian- Franklinian “representative individual” constitutes an alternative origin of the idea of modern individual in America via his genre of essay.
Abstract
This research attempts to critically elucidate the discursive impact of American puritan genre of “conversion narrative” and “spiritual autobiography” upon making the modern discourse of American individualism and democracy, by adopting a genealogical methodology that reconstructs the trajectories of American selfhood: from the original conception of “the communal selfhood” in Cotton Mather’s autobiography, Paterna, and its 18th century version of “a secular individual” in Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, in contradistinction with Emerson’s re-examinantion of representative individuality in his essays. Cotton Mather’s Paterna is an interesting document in that it attempts to presents itself as a model discourse depicting the birth of public spirit in the shape of a personal narrative. Paterna is an autobiographical sermon, as it were, whose narrative structure aims at achieving instructional purpose for the descendants and exemplary life for the public in general. Mather’s autobiography, however, fails to be an imitable model life for the general public while succeeding as a sort of American hagiography. Unlike Benjamin Franklin, Mather does not intend to create an exemplary figure for popular individuals. Rather his ideal American puritan is much too unapproachable and inaccessible. On the other hand, Franklin’s Autobiography takes advantage of, in its own ways, the discursive structures of puritan conversion and sermon, transforming them into sub-narratives for the justification of the enlightened public individual whose secular success story is represented by the ideal of anti-elite self-made man and practically-oriented public mask. Franklin's self-made man, unfettered from both the age-old puritan communal selfhood and the enlightened publicity of the 18th century political individuals, incarnates the modern ideal of American individualism in its radical break from anything authoritative and ideological. In short, American discourse of modern individualism starts from the specter of puritan communal selfhood in Paterna and completes itself in the political, public, self-fashioning subject in Franklin’s Autobiography, transforming itself into the ideal of democratic individualism still predominant in our time. But Emersonian deconstruction of Matherian- Franklinian “representative individual” constitutes an alternative origin of the idea of modern individual in America via his genre of essay.
참고문헌 (26)
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