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. |
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Page i
... discourses of early American democracy . This is an ambitious study of an important theme in early American culture and society . PAUL DOWNES is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto . He is ...
... discourses of early American democracy . This is an ambitious study of an important theme in early American culture and society . PAUL DOWNES is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto . He is ...
Page 3
... discourse of the revolution , not to analyze it , and it is to participate in what I will call , in chapter one , monarcho- phobia . In the pages of this introduction and in the chapters that follow , I will pursue some of the ways in ...
... discourse of the revolution , not to analyze it , and it is to participate in what I will call , in chapter one , monarcho- phobia . In the pages of this introduction and in the chapters that follow , I will pursue some of the ways in ...
Page 5
... discourse of democracy persistently reinscribes its defining antagonism towards monarchism and the ways in which it inherits , in altered form , some of the features of the monarchic political order . Thus we have to take note of a ...
... discourse of democracy persistently reinscribes its defining antagonism towards monarchism and the ways in which it inherits , in altered form , some of the features of the monarchic political order . Thus we have to take note of a ...
Page 7
... discourses of democ- racy . We will persistently return to a distinction between the othering of monarchism that is ... discourse has to reject absolutely the principle of authority in one political regime and replace it with its own ...
... discourses of democ- racy . We will persistently return to a distinction between the othering of monarchism that is ... discourse has to reject absolutely the principle of authority in one political regime and replace it with its own ...
Page 10
... discourse of the subject outside and before the law , the subject of the Bill of Rights , and the subject of the law's structures and concealments ( and this confrontation has recently been replayed for us in the academic study of late ...
... discourse of the subject outside and before the law , the subject of the Bill of Rights , and the subject of the law's structures and concealments ( and this confrontation has recently been replayed for us in the academic study of late ...
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