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Thomas Jefferson's 'Notes on the State of Virginia': A Prolegomena

Thomas Jefferson's 'Notes on the State of Virginia': A Prolegomena

Paperback

Series: American History

Sports GeneralGeneral United States History

ISBN10: 164889710X
ISBN13: 9781648897108
Publisher: Vernon Pr
Published: May 24 2023
Pages: 274
Weight: 0.81
Height: 0.58 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Why did Jefferson write 'Notes on the State of Virginia'? There are today two common theses. The first, the Alphabet-Soup Thesis, maintains that the book is more or less a loose collection of notes in answer to the 22 queries given by French diplomat François Barbé-Marbois. Jefferson's altering the arrangement of his answers to the questions is a matter of allowing for a smoother narrative for his answers, but other than that, one ought to be cautious not to read too much into his restructuring. The second, the Deconstructionist Thesis, is that meticulous deconstruction of the text reveals a latent thesis, which Jefferson, consciously or subconsciously, kept from his readers. Both views are problematic. The former cannot explain why Jefferson fell so deeply into the project, rearranged Marbois' questions so that the book would flow smoothly from nature to culture, and continually revise his often-lengthy answers, even after the Stockdale edition in 1787. The latter suffers from the fact that Jefferson tended never to write elliptically.

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