American Enlightenments Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason
Title : American Enlightenments Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason Series: The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Yale University Press (October 25, 2016) Language: English ISBN-10: 0300192576 ISBN-13: 978-0300192575 Description : The accepted myth of the “American Enlightenment” suggests that the rejection of monarchy and establishment of a new republic in the United States in the eighteenth century was the realization of utopian philosophies born in the intellectual salons of Europe and radiating outward to the New World. In this revelatory work, Stanford historian Caroline Winterer argues that a national mythology of a unitary, patriotic era of enlightenment in America was created during the Cold War to act as a shield against the threat of totalitarianism, and that Americans followed many paths toward political, religious, scientific, and artistic enlightenment in the 1700s that were influenc...