“A Ploughman on His Legs is Higher than a Gentleman on His Knees”: The Representation of The Middling People in Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s almanac

The various aphorisms, maxims and chronicles that compose Poor Richard’s Almanac, written and published from 1733 to 1758 by Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders, do not only provide advice and rules of conduct to the reader. A lively description of the “popular wisdom” of the time is mirrored, underpinned by the praise of virtue, modesty and industriousness. Franklin’s advice thus corresponds to the idea of the “golden mean,” but one should not overlook the role of representation, as well as the social and philosophical dimensions of the message delivered. Through the character of Saunders, they indirectly reveal Franklin’s goal of an improved society – or rather, an improved American society, but one still inspired by European principles