A Canadian who grew up outside Toronto, I first heard of Thomas Paine very briefly in high school when my Canadian history classes spent as little time as possible on the American Revolution. That was more about the Loyalist expulsion to Canada than the achievement of American independence.
I had heard Thomas Paine’s name, but Bob Dylan put me on the track of discovering Paine’s profound importance in history. Dylan has been the soundtrack of my life. When he sang about Paine in the song, “As I went out One Morning,”, his lyrics stayed with me.
O’Connor, although he inherited an estate and was a member of the Irish Parliament, was an advocate for women’s rights, supported emancipation of Catholics although a Protestant, and independence from England. When he joined the United Irishmen fighting the British occupation of Ireland, he was arrested.
The only reference to Thomas Paine made by Bob Dylan is the 1967 “As I Went Out One Morning”, on the John Wesley Harding album. I started reading Paine after I heard that song. However, every analysis I read about the song only confused me.
Diego Rivera was a famous Mexican artist in the first half of the 20th century. His most controversial project was the mural he created for the Rockefeller Center in New York City.
Diego Rivera’s Mural Panel of the American Revolution Read Post »
The new works being discovered by the Project has confirmed his role as a leading writer close to the Pitt/Shelburne faction long before coming to America. Volume I of the new Collection of his writings will be almost entirely filled with these recently discovered works.
A song by Joseph Mather, to the tune of God Save the Queen, “showing support for Tom Paine’s Rights of Man and reflecting the republican sentiment immediately understood by working people.” From the mid 1790s.
Although both lives have been well chronicled (albeit separately), I hope there may be merit in a short selective account of the most salient features of the common radical ground shared by the two great writers, and its inspiration, a comparison that has attracted scant attention.
English radical poetry has a long and honourable tradition dating back to at least the 17th century. Paine played a small but significant role in this tradition. He was a great influence on the Chartist movement which arose in the 1830s to demand the vote for working men.
Read “The Citizen Tom Paine” about Thomas Paine, a stirring call to arms for the democracy lovers worldwide. Explore the lyrics of Martin Green in this revolutionary poem about a man who galvanized patriots and championed liberty and independence against British rule and much besides.
Plato wanted poetry banned in his republic. Like many totalitarian reactionaries he saw poetry as essentially subversive. This book shows the relationship between poetry and three generations of a family which if not subversive were at the very least politically radical.
Thomas Paine is far less well known as a poet. This article seeks to place him in the tradition of English Radical Poetry and compare his work with some of his contemporaries and some of those who came after him.
