In her attack on the developing American nation, Abbe Reynal challenges that “America has not yet produced one good poet.” In his Notes on the State of Virginia Thomas Jefferson, counters this attack by showing all of the great men that America has produced. He cites Washington as a great soldier, Rittenhouse as a great astronomer, and Franklin as a great physicist. Though his point is solid, Jefferson did not need to look any further than to Benjamin Franklin to prove that America had indeed produced at least “one good poet.” A dissection of The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin shows the development of Franklin, not only as a physicist but also as a writer.
The Kunstlerroman is a sub-group of the Bildungsdroman; rather than tracing the development of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, the Kunstlerroman traces the development into an artist. Much like Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or Wolfe’s more American Look Homeward, Angel, Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography also traces his transformation from a boy employed as a chandler’s assistant to a brilliant wordsmith. Like Joyce and Wolfe, Franklin’s art is his writing. Throughout his autobiography Franklin provides the reader with a portrait of his development from an inexperienced, aspiring newspaper columnist to one of the greatest essayists in history.
A crucial factor in the Kunslerroman is the act of development. Throughout Franklin’s life he shows dynamic changes in his relationship with writing. In his youth he is apprenticed to his brother as a typesetter. The words he publishes are not original. However, Franklin does not stay in this subordinate position long. In 1723, after five years with his brother James, he runs away to Philadelphia to pursue his own talent as a writer. He continues to rise in prominence and eventually arrives at the point where he is in charge of his own publications containing his own thoughts and words. The changes in Franklin’s writing can also be seen by the outside world’s relationship with his writing. In his younger years, Franklin is forced to write his Silence Dogood letters, hiding behind a pseudonym. However, years later, as a well-connected, well-known, global citizen. Franklin’s letters become respected documents, both in the minds of the forming American nation as well as in the minds of the world.
With respect to his art, Franklin is constantly trying to improve his talent as a writer. The stylization exercises he performs with The Spectator as a youth, the formation of his poetry circle as a young adult, and his creation of Junto as a man are all examples of Franklin’s constant drive for the betterment of his mind, and in effect, his pen. In Part Two of his autobiography, Franklin comments that he lives his life under the assumption that his “writings” will be eventually “collected.” This assumption changes the way that Franklin lives his life. Given the fact that Franklin is recording his own life, he must then live his life in a manner that he would wish to write about. Franklin is the main character in the masterpiece of his life. To shape himself into the role of protagonist he aims at eliminating negative qualities from his life. He creates his thorough thirteen step plan to becoming virtuous and he also tries to remove all types of nonproductive activities from his life. He refuses to be “tempt[ed]” into playing chess “unless on this condition, that the victor in every game should have a right to impose a task, either in parts of the grammar to be got by heart, or in translations, etc..” Just as Franklin is constantly working on improving his writing methods, he is also constantly working on improving his life so that he can have something commendable to write about.
One quality Franklin shares with both Joyce and Wolfe as a developing writer is a sense of displacement. Wolfe more so than any of the three feels constantly out of place in the world believing that as a developing artist he belongs “perhaps to an older and simpler race of men…the Mythmakers.” In Look Homeward, Angel, Eliza Gant sees “the hunger for voyages in [Wolfe’s] face.” This kind of longing parallels Franklin’s “strong inclination for the sea.” Though, Franklin looses his desire to be constantly sea bound, he does maintain a tendency towards travel, making many trips over seas and throughout the colonies in his life. In Angel, Wolfe’s nomadic persona reflects the isolation he feels as a “Mythmaker.” Though Franklin, possesses a great deal more humility than Wolfe, and would never openly claim to be a “Mythmaker,” he is certainly a larger than life character who undoubtedly feels some of the same displacement as Wolfe.
In Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist and Franklin’s autobiography, the artists’ separation from society manifests itself in a spiritual form as well. Joyce, raised Irish-Catholic, ends up rejecting the Church based on the fire and brimstone sermons preached in his school. Likewise, Franklin separates himself from the Christianity practiced in most of the colonists in America in favor of Deism a more philosophical theistic belief. Franklin also separates himself from the bourgeoisie society by creating the Junto society, available by invitation only. The same decisive factor Franklin sees between himself and the rest of common society is the same distinguishing factor between the Kunstlerroman and the Bildungsroman, that is, the distinction between an artist and a normal man.
Benjamin Franklin begins his Last Will and Testament by describing himself first and foremost as a “printer.” Though Benjamin Franklin will be remembered as a dignitary, an inventor, and a statesman, he personally considers himself to be a “printer.” Like Joyce and Wolfe, his art is in his words and an exploration of his life shows the many events that led to his development as a wordsmith.
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