Journal #21: Emerson vs. Franklin

Ralph Waldo Emerson's writing style is very different from Benjamin Franklin's writing style for several obvious reasons. The most obvious is that Emerson was a Romanticist, and Franklin was a Rationalist. Therefore, Emerson's writing is less structured than Frankin's systematic style. Emerson's theme's are also different, but that can be mostly explained by the different time periods of the two authors. Another aspect of the differences was the way the authors went about presenting their points. Emerson relies more on making his readers feel his points are what is right, where Franklin uses a systematic fact and support structure to make his readers see the logic of his arguements. In short, Emerson uses intuition and feelings in his writing, and Franklin uses facts and logic to make the readers agree with whatever topic he is presenting.
Despite the differences, there are also a few similarities between Emerson and Franklin. One of the similarities is the passion they put into their writing. No matter which author or which work you choose to read, you can see that the authors really care about their subject matter. Also, both authors are very eloquent in their writing. Both Emerson and Franklin show a mastery of the English language in all of their works, and they are easy to understand and have a good word flow.
As far as the authors themselves, I think that Emerson and Franklin were quite a bit alike. Both were writers, obviously. Both of them also wanted to make a difference in the world in their own unique ways and used their writing to try to accompllish that, though Franklin wanted political change and Emerson appears to have just wanted to create more beautiful things in the world.
I'm going to go with the obvious again and say that Emerson wrote more poetry than Franklin, who really only wrote his little aphorisms and essays and speeches. Emerson did not write very many political essays, especialy compared to Franklin. They were in different time periods, so it is understandalbe that they would be different.