Thomas Jefferson's Texts: a Rhetoric in Context

The research subject of this paper is an important part of the written heritage of Thomas Jefferson, who is best known to the world as the Founding Father of the United States of America and its third President. Being a significant contributor to the public political discourse of his time and a vibrant correspondent, Jefferson wrote a plentiful of texts on both social and private matters. On the one hand, Jefferson composed numerous texts of political concern. On the other, he maintained extensive epistolary connections with his friends and family members. Thus, his oeuvre can be divided into public and private writings and analyzed in terms of their stylistic features as well as the contexts that shaped Jefferson’s rhetoric. The texts selected here as examples differ in manner, since they were written through several periods of the writer’s life and in different genres – notes, memoirs and letters. The range of selections allows us to determine Jefferson’s rhetorical characteristics as conditioned by his personal and historical circumstances alongside his literal and social background.