egoose

Not only did the Age of Reason writers wrote a lot differently than the puritan writers did, they also had a different "point" to their writing. They sought out a logical explanation and looked more deeply into a topic that the puritans had probably established for them. The puritans were the beginnings of so much thought and idea-making, while the age of reason time period was "building" on these thoughts, or even perhaps disagreeing with the established points. The Puritans seemed to take to what they had heard all their lives, rather than examining and formulating their own opinions. Both the Puritan and Age of Reason writers discuss the topic of religion. While the puritan writers often spoke about religion in a way that made it seem that it completely took over their life and directed them to do each and every thing they did, writers like Franklin took a deeper look and focused on coming up with an idea that was more "logical" to him. I found the age of reason writers a lot easier to compare to than the puritans, but this was a personal connection that I found. Both age of reason writers and puritanism writers used different vocabulary than today, but a lot of their main principles are still the same. For example, the importance of family and religion in a culture, and the importance to stand up for what you believe in were core topics and themes in the writing - as exhibited by Rowlandson and Wheatley both, two strong women from the different time periods.