Democracy, Revolution, and Monarchism in Early American LiteraturePaul Downes combines literary criticism and political history in order to explore responses to the rejection of monarchism in the American revolutionary era. Downes' analysis considers the Declaration of Independence, Franklin's autobiography, Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer and the works of America's first significant literary figures including Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. He claims that the post-revolutionary American state and the new democratic citizen inherited some of the complex features of absolute monarchy, even as they were strenuously trying to assert their difference from it. In chapters that consider the revolution's mock execution of George III, the Elizabethan notion of the 'king's two bodies' and the political significance of the secret ballot, Downes points to the traces of monarchical political structures within the practices and discourses of early American democracy. This is an ambitious study of an important theme in early American culture and society. |
From inside the book
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Page 3
... become a subject of the revolution's liberation and empowerment ? ) . I will repeatedly return to the relationship between political power and the rhetoric of immortality , and , finally , to the opportunity and anxiety generated by the ...
... become a subject of the revolution's liberation and empowerment ? ) . I will repeatedly return to the relationship between political power and the rhetoric of immortality , and , finally , to the opportunity and anxiety generated by the ...
Page 7
... becomes indistinguishable , in revolutionary rhetoric , from overcoming the constitutive aporias of the political ( everything that , under the name of politics , resists the passage between the constative theory of the state and its ...
... becomes indistinguishable , in revolutionary rhetoric , from overcoming the constitutive aporias of the political ( everything that , under the name of politics , resists the passage between the constative theory of the state and its ...
Page 8
... become what they claim already to be – succeeds insofar as it earns itself the right to command this impossibility . The effect , in other words , is rhetorical , and it produces the revolutionary people as the god - like figures who ...
... become what they claim already to be – succeeds insofar as it earns itself the right to command this impossibility . The effect , in other words , is rhetorical , and it produces the revolutionary people as the god - like figures who ...
Page 9
... becoming possible to challenge the unexamined efficacy of an appeal to the rights of man ( the rights of birth ) , it is because we may finally be able to resist the revolutionary injunction against think- ing through the relations of ...
... becoming possible to challenge the unexamined efficacy of an appeal to the rights of man ( the rights of birth ) , it is because we may finally be able to resist the revolutionary injunction against think- ing through the relations of ...
Page 12
... becomes speechless , or , we might say , dumbfounded : Andrew " starts into being ” and “ expressive yet inarticulate joy was mixed in his countenance , which seemed impressed with astonishment and con- fusion " ( 83 , 101 ) . And " No ...
... becomes speechless , or , we might say , dumbfounded : Andrew " starts into being ” and “ expressive yet inarticulate joy was mixed in his countenance , which seemed impressed with astonishment and con- fusion " ( 83 , 101 ) . And " No ...
Contents
1 | |
reading the mock executions of 1776 | 31 |
CHAPTER 2 Crèvecoeurs revolutionary loyalism | 58 |
the memoirs of Stephen Burroughs and Benjamin Franklin | 84 |
Brockden Browns secrets | 112 |
Irving and the gender of democracy | 144 |
the revolutions last word | 165 |
Notes | 182 |
Bibliography | 223 |
Index | 237 |
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Democracy, Revolution, and Monarchism in Early American Literature Paul Downes No preview available - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
American Revolution anonymous anxiety authority body politic Brockden Brown's C. L. R. James calls Carwin celebrated chapter character Charles Brockden Brown citizen claim colonies concealment Constitution convention Cooper's Crèvecoeur's culture Dame Van Winkle Declaration of Independence democracy democratic subject discourse effigies election Emerson England fantasy father Federalist Papers figure Fliegelman force founding franchise Franklin Freneau George Harvey Birch ideology Indian individual Irving's James James Fenimore Cooper James Madison Jefferson Jersey John Adams John de Crèvecoeur justice king king's Kirvan Letters literary Ludloe's Madison Memoirs monarchism monarchophobia nation Native American nature novel Paine Paine's patriotic person political subjectivity post-revolutionary quoted radical relationship representation representative republic republican resistance revolution's revolutionary rhetorical Rip Van Winkle Rip's sacrifice secrecy sense sovereign speech spell Stephen Burroughs story structure suggests temporal Thomas Paine United ventriloquism violence voters voting Warner Washington women words writes wrote