Abstract:
The objective of this dissertation is to explain the dramatic shift in Joel Barlow's works from conservative Calvinist-Federalist to liberal Deist-Jeffersonian as reflected in his poem, orations and pamphlets. To this end, four major texts by the poet and statesman Barlow have been selected, namely The Prospect of Peace (1778), The Vision of Columbus (1787), Advice to the Privileged Orders (1792, 1793), and The Columbiad (1807).
Until now, most literary critics have explained the change in Barlow's ideology as a process of secularization. This understanding, however, overemphasizes the continuity of the religious elements found in Barlow's works, while at the same time it ignores the importance of non-theological ideas (i.e. the notion of a worldly progress) for the gradual evolvement of Barlow's writing. This dissertation does not examine the transformation from Barlow's religious to secular ideology as a process of continuity, but rather as a process of syncretism which freely links elements of heterogeneous ideologies until a new synthesis is achieved in Barlow's most mature work The Columbiad.