Living with Paine: The age of reason in nineteenth-century American literature

Abstract

The completion of this thesis represents a reasonable stopping point after a year of detective work - a year spent trying to piece together one small story in the history of nineteenth-century American free thought. In July of 2005, I happened to pick up a copy of Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason at a bookstore in Chicago, and having nothing much to do for the next few hours, I sat down in a café and read the book cover to cover. I was captivated. My experience, in fact, was probably not unlike the experience of Mark Twain when he first encountered The Age of Reason as a cub pilot in 1857. Years later, in his autobiographical dictations, Twain would say about the book that he "read it with fear and hesitation, but marveling at its fearlessness and power" (MTB 3:1445). The young river-boat captain was stunned, as was I, and I set out to discover if the book had captured the attention of others in the same way it had fascinated me.

Date of Award	2006
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	Eastern Illinois University
Supervisor	Parley Ann Boswell (Supervisor)