How The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin drew on Plutarch's Lives
A documented line of influence: Benjamin Franklin demonstrably engaged Plutarch’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Plutarch's Lives
Plutarch · c. 110
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin · 1791
EnlightenmentRelevance
7/10
On The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin’s page
- Franklin tells you himself where the form came from: Plutarch's Lives, devoured as a boy from his father's shelf — "time spent to great advantage"
- That's why the Autobiography reads like a Plutarchan life and not a confession: it's an exemplary biography, character built from deeds, meant to be copied
- Read Plutarch first and you see the mold Franklin poured himself into
On Plutarch's Lives’s page
- Franklin names the Lives by name — it sat in his father's library, and he says he "read abundantly" in it as a boy and still thought "that time spent to great advantage"
- Plutarch's whole method — the life as a usable example, character read through deeds — became Franklin's template for writing his own
- See where America's first great self-made man learned how a life gets turned into a lesson