American Literature / Unit 5 AML 0414 short lesson, about 20 seconds
John and Abigail Adams: The Letter as Literature
Captions available
The idea
The letters between John and Abigail Adams across the Revolutionary years, which the witness prints from seventeen seventy-four onward, carry politics, farm management, illness and affection in the same paragraph. They are the period's best evidence that private correspondence was a literary form.
In practice
Politics and the farm in one paragraph.
Where people slip
Letters were written expecting to be kept.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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