Democracy, Revolution, and Monarchism in Early American Literature

ISBN-13: 9780521813396 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 252 str.

Paul Downes

Opis

Paul Downes offers a radical revision of some of the most cherished elements of early American cultural identity. The founding texts and writers of the Republic, he claims, did not wholly displace what they claimed to oppose. Instead, Downes argues, the entire construction of a Republican public sphere actually borrowed and adapted central features of Monarchical rule. Downes discovers this theme not only in a wide range of American novels, but also in readings of a variety of political documents that created the philosophical culture of the American revolutionary period.

Recenzje

"Downe's Democracy deconstructs the traditional opposition between monarchy and democracy, thus advancing a compelling argument of how the extension of democratic rights owes much to its inheritance from monarchy. Unapologetically theoretical, Downes creates an engaging dialogue with the work of philosophers and political theorists like Derrida, Balibar, Adrendt, Laclau and Mouffe. The result is a work that provides a fresh methodological approach to the field of early American literature." English Studies in Canada,/i Pablo Ramirez, University of Guelph

Spis treści

Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction: the spell of democracy; 1. Monarchophobia: reading the mock executions of 1776; 2. Crèvecoeur's revolutionary loyalism; 3. Citizen subjects: the memoirs of Stephen Burroughs and Benjamin Franklin; 4. An epistemology of the ballot box: Brockden Brown's secrets; 5. Luxury, effeminacy, corruption: Irving and the gender of democracy; Afterword: the revolution's last word; Notes, Bibliography; Index.