1. See Adams's general assessment of Franklin, from which this passage was taken in The Works of John Adams, ed., Adams, Charles Francis (Boston, 1856), I, pp. 660–64.Google Scholar

2. Franklin wrote the original passage in French: “Reflechissez combien de nos Devoirs mème elle ordonnees d'etre naturellement des Plaisirs; & qu'elle a eu la Bonte de plus, de donner le Nom de Peches a plusieurs afin que nous en jouissions avec plus Gout.” Quoted in Smythe, A. H., ed., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, 2 vols. (New York, 1907), X, p. 436.Google Scholar All references in the text to this edition will hereafter be cited as W.

3. See the following works: McMaster, John Bach, Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters (Boston, 1887)Google Scholar; Davy, Francis X., “Benjamin Franklin, Satirist: the Satire of Franklin and Its Rhetoric,” Diss. Columbia University, 1958Google Scholar, a comprehensive analysis of every formal and literary aspect of Franklin's satire; Granger, Bruce Ingha, Benjamin Franklin, An American Man of Letters (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1964)Google Scholar, the standard book on the subject, and Granger, 's Political Satire in the American Revolution, 1763–1783 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Aldridge, A. O., Franklin and His French Contemporaries (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1957)Google Scholar, and Aldridge, 's biography, Benjamin Franklin: Philosopher and Man (Philadelphia, Pa.: Lippincott, 1965)Google Scholar; Baender, Paul, “The Basis of Franklin's Duplicative Satires,” American Literature, 32 (11 1960), 267–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Amacher, Richard E., ed., Franklin's Wit and Folly (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1953)Google Scholar, and Amacher, 's Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, Conn.: College and Univ. Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Kallen, Horace M., “Free Man Laughing: Benjamin Franklin,” in his Liberty, Laughter and Tears (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1968), 273–307Google Scholar; Sappenfield, James A., A Sweet Instruction, Franklin's Journalism as a Literary Apprenticeship (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1973)Google Scholar; and Buxbaum, Melvin H., Benjamin Franklin and the Zealous Presbyterians (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1975).Google Scholar These works contain helpful bibliographies. The standard biography is Van Doren, Carl's Benjamin Franklin (New York: Viking Press Compass Edition, 1964).Google Scholar However, Aldridge's biography is more up-to-date in scholarship than Van Doren's. Clearly, I am indebted to all these scholars in developing my analysis. But the limited scope of this study prevents discussion of all of Franklin's comic works. I have chosen to ignore those that would not critically add or detract from my general thesis.

4. Crane, Verner W., ed., Benjamin Franklin's Letters to the Press 1758–1775 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1950), p. xxv. Hereafter cited in the text as LP.Google Scholar

5. Kenney, W. Howland, ed., Laughter in the Wilderness (Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 1976), p. 21.Google Scholar

6. See Hauck, Richard Boyd, A Cheerful Nihilism, Confidence & “The Absurd” in American Humorous Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 32–38.Google Scholar But for an excellent coverage of contrasting opinions, including the attacks by Lawrence and Angoff, see Sanford, Charles G., ed., Benjamin Franklin and the American Character (Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1955).Google Scholar A provocative psychohistorical analysis is Bushman, Richard L.'s “On the Uses of Psychology: Conflict and Conciliation in Benjamin Franklin,” History and Theory, 5 (1966), 3 :225–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which explores Franklin, 's “aversion to disputes where love and prestige are at stake” (p. 234).Google Scholar

7. Two excellent studies of Franklin's “image” are: Miles, Richard D., “The American Image of Benjamin Franklin,” American Quarterly. 11 (Summer 1957), 117–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ward, John W., “Who Was Benjamin Franklin?” The American Scholar, 32 (Autumn 1963), 541–53.Google Scholar

8. See Ford, Worthington C., “Franklin's New England Courant,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 57 (02–04 1924), 336–53Google Scholar; and the earlier, but still valuable study by Cook, Elizabeth C., Literary Influences in Colonial Newspapers, 1704–1750 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1912), pp. 8–28, 93–100Google Scholar, in which the Addisonian influence on early American satire and newspaper attitudes is particularly well established. Important, too, is Homer, George F., “Franklin's ‘Dogood Papers’” Re-examined,” Studies in Philology, 37 (07 1940), 501–23Google Scholar, for a detailed background on the controversy in which the Courant was embroiled.

9. Labaree, Leonard W. et al. , eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 20 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959– ) I, p. 331Google Scholar, hereafter cited in the text of this essay as P. This edition contains important background material and criticism on everything Franklin wrote. For a thorough study of Franklin's reading and other influences on his development, see Tourtellot, Arthur Bernon, Benjamin Franklin: The Shaping of Genius, The Boston Years (New York: Doubleday, 1977).Google Scholar

10. See Tave, Stuart M., The Amiable Humorist: A Study in the Comic Theory and Criticism of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960)Google Scholar, which is the definitive study of this idea. Also see Franklin's short paragraph on his concern with “good” and “ill” nature in Labaree, et al. , eds., Papers, I, p. 327.Google Scholar

11. Aldridge, A. O., “Franklin's ‘Shaftesburian’ Dialogues not Franklin's: A Revision of the Franklin Canon,” American Literature, 21 (03 1949), 151–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. Aldridge, , Benjamin Franklin, pp. 58–59.Google Scholar

13. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, eds., Labaree, Leonard W. et al. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1964), p. 4.Google Scholar Hereafter cited in the text as Auto.

14. For a good discussion of the function of these masks in satire, see Mack, Maynard, “The Muse of Satire,” Yale Review, 41 (1951–1952), 80–92.Google Scholar

15. Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour (1709; rpt. New York: Garland Publishers, 1971), p. 19.Google Scholar

16. The best study of this issue is Levy, Leonard W., Legacy of Suppression: Freedom of Speech in Early America (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960).Google Scholar

17. Buxbaum, , Benjamin Franklin, pp. 65–68Google Scholar, discusses Franklin's satire in the light of the general decline of the form during this period and gives some excellent examples of the elegies that illustrate the debasement.

18. Lynn, Kenneth S., ed., The Comic Tradition in America: An Anthology (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958), p. 3.Google Scholar

19. See Eliot, Thomas R., “The Relation Between Benjamin Franklin and Adam Smith Before 1776,” Political Science Quarterly, 49 (03 1924), 67–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carey, Lewis J., Franklin's Economic Views (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1928)Google Scholar; and Conner, Paul W., Poor Richard's Politics, Benjamin Franklin and His New American Order (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), Chap. 3.Google Scholar

Not surprisingly, Franklin was concerned with developing American wealth and trade by freeing the colonies from British mercantile domination through “free trade.” This would help promote the growth of the American interior, which he felt had almost unlimited room, and produce larger markets for both America and Britain. America could absorb European workers and maintain an economic balance of high wages on both continents. Yet government would be instrumental in stimulating enterprise, controlling trade balance, and colonizing the West. Thus Conner terms Franklin, 's position as a “free trade mercantilism” (p. 74)Google Scholar, a blend of two systems developed especially after 1760. Most commentators agree that Franklin, 's tract “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind” (1751)Google Scholar is central to his economic thought, since it predicted the doubling of the American population every twenty-five years or so and that the English population in America would outstrip that of Britain, predictions that were fulfilled in the nineteenth century. Franklin's “plan” was to utilize this growth effectively both through economic controls and free trade and the right to develop native industries. That is why Franklin later urged that skilled people emigrate to America and opposed British “internal” taxation.

Also important was his view that although large spending and luxuries might be private vices, they could also be “public benefits” (Carey, , p. 220)Google Scholar, provided the buying increased American wealth and industry, thereby creating more jobs and an increased money flow. Thus the paradox of what Carey calls a “commendable folly”—a view consistent with Franklin's capacity to see the double-edged nature of human behavior and activity. See Smythe, , ed., Writings, IX, pp. 240–48Google Scholar (Franklin, 's letter to Vaughan, , 07 26, 1784).Google Scholar

20. See Jorgenson, Chester, “Benjamin Franklin and Rabelais,” Classical Journal, 29 (04 1934), 538–40.Google Scholar A good example of a piece similar to nineteenth-century dialect humor is Franklin's “Teague's Advertisement” (1741), a satirical poem directed at Andrew Bradford and his American Weekly Mercury. The opening lines:

Arra Joy! My montly Macasheen shall contain Sheets four,

Or an Equivalent, which is something more;

So dat twelve Times four shall make fifty two,

Which is twice as much as fifty two Newsh-Papers do:

George Webbe was also a likely target of this poem. See Aldridge, A. O., “A Humorous Poem by Benjamin Franklin,” American Philosophical Society Proceedings, 98 (1954), 397–99.Google Scholar

21. The definitive study of Franklin's knowledge and use of proverbs is Newcomb, Robert, “The Sources of Benjamin Franklin's Sayings of Poor Richard,” diss. Univ. of Maryland, 1957.Google Scholar Also important are Ross, John F., “The Character of Poor Richard: Its Source and Alteration,” PMLA, 35 (09 1940), 785–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meister, Charles W., “Franklin as a Proverb Stylist,” American Literature, 24 (05 1952), 157–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gallacher, Stuart A., “Franklin's Way to Wealth: A Florilegium of Proverbs and Wise Sayings,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 48 (07 1949), 229–51.Google Scholar

Most critics tend to see Franklin's choice and selection of proverbs as being intimately connected to his own view of life rather than simply as good material for a publishing venture, though of course that was one of his considerations. Howevermuch Poor Richard and Father Abraham are fictional masks, it seems to me their “wisdom” clearly reflects Franklin's own personal and social concerns, complexly and sometimes ironically rendered.

22. See Sappenfield, , A Sweet Instruction, pp. 125–77Google Scholar, who persuasively argues for this development, revising the study by John F. Ross, cited in note 21. Also Nickels, Cameron C., “Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanacs: The Humblest of His Labors,” in The Oldest Revolutionary: Essays on Benjamin Franklin, ed., Lemay, J. A. Leo (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1976), pp. 77–89.Google Scholar Nickels likewise sees development and change but insists that Poor Richard—especially in the later almanacs—is an “ironic persona” and not Franklin, himself (p. 88).Google Scholar

23. The following discussion is indebted to Alexander, John K., “Philadelphia's ‘Other Half: Attitudes Toward Poverty and the Meaning of Poverty in Philadelphia, 1760–1800,” diss. Univ. of Chicago, 1973.Google Scholar And for an excellent general account of how Philadelphia handled the problems of poverty through charity organizations, ecclesiastical institutions, etc., see Carl, and Bridenbaugh, Jessica. Rebels and Gentlemen: Philadelphia in the Age of Franklin (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), Chap. 7.Google Scholar

24. Twain, Mark, “The Late Benjamin Franklin,” The Galaxy, 10 (1870), 138–39Google Scholar, and “The Autobiography of a Damned Fool,” in Mark Twain's Satires & Burlesques, ed. with an introduction by Rogers, Franklin R. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1967), especially pp. 144–45.Google Scholar In the latter work Twain patterned the narrator broadly on his brother, Orion, who admired Franklin somewhat inordinately. See also Cox, James M., Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1966), p. 92Google Scholar, for a discussion of the way Twain may have “inverted” Poor Richard's maxims to his own ends in works like Pudd'nhead Wilson.

25. Geismar, Maxwell, Mark Twain: An American Prophet, Abridged, ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), pp. 40–41.Google Scholar Allison Ensor briefly describes the reaction against Franklin, in “The Downfall of Poor Richard: Franklin as Seen by Hawthorne, Melville, and Mark Twain,” Mark Twain Journal, 17 (Winter 1975), 14–18.Google Scholar

26. In Lopez, Claude-Anne, ed., The Bagatelles from Passy (New York: Eakins Press, 1967), p. 47. Hereafter cited in the text as B.Google Scholar

27. Simson, George, “Legal Sources for Franklin's ‘Edict,’” American Literature, 32 (05 1960), 152–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. But see Van Doren, , pp. 468–75, 480–81.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., p. 447.

30. See I. Bernard Cohen's essay in Sanford, ed., Benjamin Franklin and the American Character, pp. 83–93.Google Scholar

31. The Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin Written by Himself and Continued by His Grandson and Others (Philadelphia, Pa., 1840), p. 346.Google Scholar

32. In Labaree, et al. , eds., Papers, IX, p. 251.Google Scholar And in another letter to Mary (ibid., pp. 119–22), Franklin remarks that no matter how valuable the study of “Nature” or science may be, it is more important to be a good Christian. “Nicholas Gimcrack … neglected the Care of his Family, to pursue Butterflies, was a just Object of Ridicule … and fair Game to the Satyrist.”

33. Richard E. Amacher uses Walter Blair's term “horse-sense” to describe this piece as well as several other Franklin satires on “projecting.” See “Humor in Franklin's Hoaxes and Satires,” Studies in American Humor, 2 (04 1975), 4–20.Google Scholar Particularly interesting is the discussion of Franklin, 's An Economical Project (1784)Google Scholar, a work not included in this analysts since it is yet another example of Franklin's penchant for self-satire and his own—and society's—use of pretentious science or technology.

34. The “revolutionary” spirit inspired by Polly in such figures as the Abbé Raynal and Diderot is analyzed in Hall, Max, Benjamin Franklin and Polly Baker: The History of a Literary Deception (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1960).Google Scholar But also see J. A. Leo Lemay's detailed analysis, “The Text, Rhetorical Strategies, and Themes of ‘The Speech of Miss Polly Baker,’” in The Oldest Revolutionary, pp. 91–120.Google Scholar Lemay argues for the superiority of the text that appeared in the August 11, 1747, Maryland Gazette. He then analyzes the “Speech” in terms of its rhetorical patterns and structure, concluding, “If we focus on the persona and tone, the Speech is generally a Horatian satire; if we pay attention … to … the obvious comic authorial voice, the Speech is a jeu d'esprit or a hoax; and if we analyze the implied themes … the Speech is a bitter Juvenalian satire” (114). My own brief remarks on the “Speech” were written before I saw Lemay's important study, but it supports my contention that Franklin's art worked dialectically to balance and synthesize contrasting comic tones.

35. This attitude reflects a basic animus toward “High Learning” or scholasticism common to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pietism. Swift and Franklin also distrusted the foolish extremes “new” scientific learning was susceptible to. What all of them shared was a fundamental concern for “practicalities” and common human needs of everyday life. These things took priority over mastering Aristotle or “impractical” learning or “projects.”

36. Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), p. 132.Google Scholar

37. In The Rising Glory of America, ed. with Introduction and notes by Wood, Gordon (New York: Braziller, 1970), p. 179.Google Scholar

38. Quoted in Roth, Martin, Comedy and America: The Lost World of Washington Irving (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1976), p. 68, passim.Google Scholar

39. Quoted in Sanford, , ed., Benjamin Franklin and the American Character, p. 88.Google Scholar

40. Lopez, Claude-Anne. Mon Cher Papa: Franklin and the Ladies of Paris (New Haven. Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1966).Google Scholar Also Fay, Bernard, Franklin: The Apostle of Modern Times (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1929), pp. 453–500.Google Scholar

41. Franklin's “corn-myth” has quite an interesting history which is traced by Masterson, James R., “A Foolish Oneida Tale,” American Literature, 10 (03 1938), 54–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Franklin provided a version of this myth for Gottfried Achenwall, 's Observations on North America (1766)Google Scholar, which is more elaborately developed in “Remarks.” There is yet another version of it in “The Captivity of William Henry” (1768)Google Scholar, which the editors of the Franklin, PapersGoogle Scholar hesitantly attribute to Franklin (Labaree et al., XV, pp. 145–48). But the consensus is that the myth is a hoax, being quite unlike Iroquois myths in general. A. O. Aldridge studies Franklin's concern for and knowledge of Indians in “Franklin's Deistical Indians,” American Philosophical Society Proceedings, 94 (1950), 398–410.Google Scholar Aldridge judges this bagatelle to be a. Swiftian satire on religions proselytizing and economic imperialism (p. 398). Though not a believer in the “Noble Savage,” Franklin admired the Indian's “natural” tact and eloquence, especially in debates and councils. One “anonymous” writer comments, in aeulogistic review of Franklin, 's life (1792)Google Scholar, that Franklin “used to mention the custom of the Indians with great applause, who, after listening with profound attention to the observations of the other, preserve a respectful silence of some minutes, before they begin their own reply.” In The Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, p. 191.Google Scholar

42. See Buxbaum, , Benjamin Franklin, pp. 185–219.Google Scholar

43. Franklin followed this hoax with yet another “Supplement,” this time a letter supposedly from John Paul Jones in which he disclaims the British charge of being a pirate and accuses the British King of being one. However, Horace Walpole saw through it and wrote that “Dr. Franklin … was the author. It is certainly written by a first-class pen, and not a common man-of-war.” Quoted in Davy, , “Benjamin Franklin, Satirist,” p. 118.Google Scholar

44. Mellon, M. T., Early American Views on American Slavery, ed., Morris, Richard B. (New York: Bergman Publishers, 1969), pp. 8–28.Google Scholar Also Carey, , Franklin's Economic Views, pp. 61–97Google Scholar, and Van Doren, , Benjamin Franklin, pp. 129, 198, 393–94, passim.Google Scholar

45. Perhaps the most important published studies apart from the general discussions found in the biographies are: Sanford, Charles L., “An American's Pilgrim's Progress,” 4 (Winter 1955), 297–310Google Scholar; Levin, David, “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: The Puritan Experimenter in Life and Art,” Yale Review, 53 (1963–1964), 258–75Google Scholar; Sayre, Robert F., The Examined Self: Benjamin Franklin, Henry Adams, Henry James (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 3–43Google Scholar; Cawelti, John G., Apostles of the Self-Made Man (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 11–12Google Scholar, passim; Ketcham, Ralph L., “Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography,” in Landmarks of American Writing, ed., Cohen, Hennig (New York: Basic Books, 1969), pp. 20–31Google Scholar, which is an excellent discussion of the book's place among eighteenth-century autobiographies; Lynen, John F., “Benjamin Franklin and the Choice of Single Point of View,” rpt. in The Puritan Imagination: Essays in Revaluation, ed., Bercovitch, Sacvan (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1974), 173–95Google Scholar: Buxbaum, Melvin H., Benjamin Franklin, pp. 7–46Google Scholar; Lemay, J. A. Leo, “Franklin and the Autobiography: An Essay on Recent Scholarship,” Eighteenth Century Studies, 1 (12 1967), 185–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spengemann, William C. and Lundquist, L. R., “Autobiography and the American Myth,” American Quarterly, 17 (Fall 1965), 501–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sappenfield, , pp. 178–214.Google Scholar Finally, see John Griffith's balanced appraisal, “Franklin's Sanity and the Man behind the Masks” in Lemay, , ed., The Oldest Revolutionary, pp. 123–36Google Scholar, and Parker, David L., “From Sound Believer to Practical Preparationist: Some Puritan Harmonics in Franklin's Autobiography,”Google Scholaribid., pp. 67–75.

46. Lynen writes that “Prof. Sayre is right in insisting on Franklin's irony; the list [of Virtues] is not meant in the sense assumed in most of the earnest attacks upon his ethics” (Lynen, , “Benjamin Franklin,” p. 182).Google Scholar

47. At least one contemporary psychologist has associated Franklin's method with the theories of B. F. Skinner. See Snortum, John R., “Ben Franklin's Pursuit of Perfection,” Psychology Today (04 1976), 80–83Google Scholar; indeed. Snortum stresses—rightly—that “Franklin's primary purpose was to leave us a method rather than a list” (p. 83).Google Scholar

48. Despite the wide philosophical and cultural gap between the two, Franklin's position is not radically different from Swift's who may have influenced him in this respect as in so many others. In his A Project for the Advancement of Religion Etc. (1709)Google Scholar, Swift acknowledges that it is better to have hypocrites in religion and virtue than outright “Infidelity and Vice: It [hypocrisy] wears the Livery of Religion … and is cautious of giving Scandal.” Most significantly, Swift writes—perhaps satirically—that “it is often with Religion as it is with Love; which, by much Dissembling, at last grows real.” Bickerstaff Papers and Pamphlets on the Church, ed., Davis, Herbert (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957), p. 57.Google Scholar Of course Swift is supporting a religious orthodoxy and Franklin is not; but they are both wedded to Christian morality and willing to accept a measure of “appearance” until the “real” emerges under the pressure of time, habit, and control. And John F. Lynen perceptively comments that “Franklin's critics commonly imply that he has elevated behavioral modes into intrinsic merits when in fact it is the very purpose of his instrumentalism to preserve this distinction” (“Benjamin Franklin,” p. 182).Google Scholar Perhaps we can go further and say that the “distinction” may have been more apparent than real for Franklin. It would seem that for Franklin behavioral modes and merit were organically connected and not ultimately separable. Rational method or “art” simply cultivated the seeds of virtue and reason in humanity. The one responded to the other. The necessity to categorize the process into lists was a function of rational analysis and “scientific” classification rather than forms that had to be accepted as moral virtues per se. They were only moral means to moral (and rational) ends. Indeed, the whole pattern of “means and ends” was probably an inheritance from Franklin's Puritan background which became secularized. For a discussion of Franklin's ideas on virtue, see Larson, David L., “Franklin on the Nature of Man and the Possibility of Virtue,” Early American Literature, 10 (Fall 1975), 111–20.Google Scholar And Aldridge reminds us that, in the last analysis, Franklin affirmed that happiness “rather depends on Internals than Externals; and that, besides the natural Effects of Wisdom and Virtue, Vice and Folly, there is such a Thing as being of a happy or unhappy Constitution” (Benjamin Franklin, p. 61).Google Scholar

49. See Lemay, J. A. Leo, “Franklin and the Autobiography,” p. 203Google Scholar, who rightly insists that the problem here was profoundly significant in eighteenthcentury moral philosophy. But I feel that Lemay overstates his interpretation when he says that Franklin “maligned” the idea of moral perfection in this part of the Autobiography. He writes that “Franklin disarmed his contemporary scoffers by himself satirizing the attempt to be virtuous” and created an “ingenu narrator” to signal his “spoofing.” But to show the failure of achieving moral perfection is not the same thing as to malign it; there is no real indignatio or sense of the absurd in Franklin's tone. However, there does seem to be a “carry-over” in this section from Franklin's comic style in his bagatelles. This question needs fuller literary analysis.

50. Sappenfield, , A Sweet InstructionGoogle Scholar, gives a fine analysis and critical overview of this episode, pp. 183–91. But while he does admit that Franklin thought his project “worthwhile,” Sappenfield reads the episode as being “comic” throughout. For example, he argues that Franklin's elevated “metaphors of conquest, struggle, and guarding” indicate this. My position is that Franklin's language and psychological tone are those of an intense, serious struggle, which precipitates his comic attitude only when the reality of failure confronts him, His humor serves him, as it often did, to neutralize dialectically, his threatening or troubling emotions.

51. Kris, Ernst, “Ego Development and the Comic,” rpt. in Theories of Comedy, ed. with an introduction by Lauter, Paul (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1964), p. 446.Google Scholar