Reform

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes and compares the outlooks on reform of John Withrop and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The writer looks to their writings to further explain their outlooks. Winthrop's address, "A Model of Christian Charity" is described as containing his vision of a new social order. The address is analyzed and the methods Winthrop used to get his message across to his audience are discussed. The paper then discusses Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophy, describing it as a philosophy that encouraged independent thinking. Emerson's works are examined as reflecting this philosophy.

From the Paper:

"Winthrop is consistently following the same theme i.e. community must follow God's commands and the covenant and concludes, "we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it"(p. 92). Throughout the address, Winthrop was taking about the abode where people would ultimately go. When he talked about the city, it was not just the land the community was to reach at the end of the present journey but the city that they would create for themselves in the thereafter. The title of Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity" (1630) explains what the speaker wanted in a model society and what was his definition of reform. The speaker felt that the community is in extreme peril, which obviously generates moral panic among the colonists. This panic helps them acknowledge the need for something bigger and less tangible than physical weapons. J. Gerald Janzen, in "The Terror of history and the Fear of the Lord," offers an explanation for Winthrop brand of reformation..."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Merton M. Sealts, Jr. Vol. 5. Cambridge: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1965.
• --. The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Ralph H. Orth and Alfred R. Ferguson. Vol. 9. Cambridge: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 1971.
• ----"New England Reformers." 1844. Essays First and Second Series. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. 361-79.
• Johnson, Linck C. "Reforming the Reformers: Emerson, Thoreau, and the Sunday Lectures at Amory Hall, Boston." ESQ 37.4 (1991): 235-89.
• Reynolds, Larry J. European Revolutions and the American Literary Renaissance. New Haven: Yale UP, 1988.

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