Post 6: Jefferson

A surprising aspect of Thomas Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book is its inclusion of Greek. On pages 64-81 in the Wilson edition, Jefferson provides the Greek text of Euripides and the Odyssey. I selected Alexander Pope as the author to focus in on for last week’s assignment and found that Jefferson relied on his translation of Euripides the most. This is interesting because many of Pope’s own poems are including in this compilation, so we can get an idea of which literary figures Jefferson admired.

After some research, I found that the classics had a profound effect on the American Revolution, so Jefferson’s affinity for classical Greek literature becomes more understandable. When one considers the ancient Greek political system, it becomes even less surprising why the early Americans were drawn to it—democracy could not exist under the British. This system was enthralling to the Founding Fathers and many of them developed fascinations with the early Greeks and Romans. It also makes sense that we see early Latin in this Literary Commonplace Book then as well. To the American revolutionaries, “Greek and Roman elements…contributed to the formulation of the ideology by which the colonists justified their opposition to British policy and their claim to a greater freedom” (Mullett 92). When we put this in a contemporary context, American politics as we know it relies on these early Greek conceptions of government. And one also sees the influence of both literature and politics in the conception of statehood, independence, and sovereignty. In fact, after researching, I realize it’s basically a given that Jefferson included early classics in his Literary Commonplace Book.

Lylah Uttamsingh

Works Cited

Mullett, Charles F. “Classical Influences on the American Revolution.” The Classical Journal, vol. 35, no. 2, 1939, pp. 92–104. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3291341. Accessed 14 Apr. 2020.

Wilson, D. L. Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book. Princeton University Pres, 2016