LEADER 02629nam 2200325z- 450 001 9910583576403321 005 20220715 010 $a1-4214-2841-5 035 $a(CKB)5460000000023617 035 $a(oapen)https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/88792 035 $a(oapen)doab88792 035 $a(EXLCZ)995460000000023617 100 $a20202207d2012 |y 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurmn|---annan 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 00$aThe Unfinished Life of Benjamin Franklin 210 $cJohns Hopkins University Press$d2012 215 $a1 online resource (232 p.) 330 $aBenjamin Franklin wrote his posthumously published memoir-a model of the genre-in several pieces and in different temporal and physical places. Douglas Anderson's study of this work reveals the famed inventor as a literary adept whose approach to autobiographical narrative was as innovative and radical as the inventions and political thought for which he is renowned.Franklin never completed his autobiography, choosing instead to immerse his reader in the formal and textual atmosphere of a deliberately "unfinished" life. Taking this decision on Franklin's part as a starting point, Anderson treats the memoir as a subtle and rewarding reading lesson, independent of the famous life that it dramatizes but closely linked to the work of predecessors and successors like John Bunyan and Alexis de Tocqueville, whose books help illuminate Franklin's complex imagination. Anderson shows that Franklin's incomplete story exploits the disorderly and disruptive state of a lived life, as opposed to striving for the meticulous finish of standard memoirs, biographies, and histories. In presenting Franklin's autobiography as an exemplary formal experiment in an era that its author once called the Age of Experiments, The Unfinished Life of Benjamin Franklin veers away from the familiar practices of traditional biographers, viewing history through the lens of literary imagination rather than the other way around. Anderson's carefully considered work makes a persuasive case for revisiting this celebrated book with a keener appreciation for the subtlety and beauty of Franklin's performance. 606 $aBiography: historical, political & military$2bicssc 610 $aBiography: historical, political & military 615 7$aBiography: historical, political & military 700 $aAnderson$b Douglas$4auth$0169119 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910583576403321 996 $aThe Unfinished Life of Benjamin Franklin$93038936 997 $aUNINA