Literature and the Arts in the Revolutionary Era
By the time of the American Revolution (1775–83), American writers had ventured beyond the Puritan literary style and its religious themes and had developed styles of writing that grew from distinctly American experiences. (The Puritans were a group of Protestants who broke with the Church of England; they believed that church rituals should be simplified and that people should follow strict religious discipline.) The colonial fascination with science, nature, freedom, and innovation came through in the writings of the Revolutionary period. The colonists developed their own way of speaking as well, no longer copying the more formal style of British writers. (Noah Webster's Blue-Backed Speller, published in 1783, helped to standardize the new American version of English.)
Author David Hawke offered an example of the American literary style in The Colonial Experience. Founding Father Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), he noted, "took the seventeenth-century saying 'Three may keep counsel, if two be away' and converted it into 'Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.'"
Some of the best literature of the colonial era described everyday life in New England and, in the process, depicted aspects of the fledgling American character.
