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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... participation and opportunity. In chapter one I consider the specific role played by the figure of George III in the heat of the American Revolution and work towards a better understanding of Emerson's striking retrospective description ...
... participation and opportunity. In chapter one I consider the specific role played by the figure of George III in the heat of the American Revolution and work towards a better understanding of Emerson's striking retrospective description ...
Page 3
... participate in the discourse of the revolution, not to analyze it, and it is to participate in what I will call, in chapter one, monarchophobia. In the pages ofthis introduction and in the chapters that follow, I will pursue some of the ...
... participate in the discourse of the revolution, not to analyze it, and it is to participate in what I will call, in chapter one, monarchophobia. In the pages ofthis introduction and in the chapters that follow, I will pursue some of the ...
Page 5
... participates in a post-modern analysis of the constitutive role played by an antagonist or enemy in the construction of any political identity. The American Revolution's crucial opposition between monarchism and democracy cannot be ...
... participates in a post-modern analysis of the constitutive role played by an antagonist or enemy in the construction of any political identity. The American Revolution's crucial opposition between monarchism and democracy cannot be ...
Page 12
... participates here in an aspect of monarchic power as it had been developed in England since at least Elizabethan times: Andrew has inherited the king's duplicitous ontology (his mortal and immortal bodies). I will address this concept ...
... participates here in an aspect of monarchic power as it had been developed in England since at least Elizabethan times: Andrew has inherited the king's duplicitous ontology (his mortal and immortal bodies). I will address this concept ...
Page 14
... participate in a widespread appeal to a “mechanical determinism” that served to “shield and exculpate individuals from the ultimate and uncomfortable responsibility of their newly heightened historical agency” (Fliegelman, Declaring ...
... participate in a widespread appeal to a “mechanical determinism” that served to “shield and exculpate individuals from the ultimate and uncomfortable responsibility of their newly heightened historical agency” (Fliegelman, Declaring ...
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 appeared attempt authority ballot become begins body Brown’s Burroughs calls Carwin celebrated chapter character citizen claim colonies common concealment consider Constitution continues convention Cooper’s course Cr`evecoeur’s culture death democracy democratic difference discourse discussion early election England example experience fact farmer father Federalist figure finally force founding Franklin freedom George gives independence Indian individual interest James kind king language Letters Madison Memoirs monarchism Native nature never notes novel ofthe once original Paine participate particular patriotic person political possibility post-revolutionary precisely present produced quoted radical reference relationship representation representative republic republican resistance revolution’s revolutionary rhetorical secrecy secret seems sense social society sovereign space speech story structure suggests tells things turn United voice voting Winkle women writes wrote