Benjamin Franklin and the Poetics of the New Diplomacy

Abstract: This essay interprets the literary means Benjamin Franklin used in establishing a novel style of diplomatic representation. This style dispensed with much, but not all, of the ritual of what was then regarded as the old, European diplomacy in which diplomatic actors performed the dual role of representation, being both representative and representational; that is, as both spokespeople for, and emblems of, their national cause. Through them one is able to detect the interweaving of existing diplomatic standards and protocols in a self-consciously New World vocation with its own demands for recognition from the imperial center.