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 3
... produced by the American Revolution can be thought of as being , in Jonathan Mayhew's words , " as fabulous and chimerical , as transubstantiation ; or any of those most absurd reveries of ancient or modern visionaries " ( " Discourse ...
... produced by the American Revolution can be thought of as being , in Jonathan Mayhew's words , " as fabulous and chimerical , as transubstantiation ; or any of those most absurd reveries of ancient or modern visionaries " ( " Discourse ...
Page 7
... produces a range of fascinating figures , voices , and narratives in the polemics and plots of the new nation's novels , memoirs , and pamphlets . In the pages that follow , I want to track the fortunes of terms that link an antipathy ...
... produces a range of fascinating figures , voices , and narratives in the polemics and plots of the new nation's novels , memoirs , and pamphlets . In the pages that follow , I want to track the fortunes of terms that link an antipathy ...
Page 8
... produce themselves as such - and thereby 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 ...
... produce themselves as such - and thereby 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 ...
Page 11
... produces an expe- rience of time ) , performs ( and hides ) its impossibility in the ballot box - the magician's box of democracy . As if to say , in an entirely revolution- ary appropriation of monarchism's rallying cry : the ...
... produces an expe- rience of time ) , performs ( and hides ) its impossibility in the ballot box - the magician's box of democracy . As if to say , in an entirely revolution- ary appropriation of monarchism's rallying cry : the ...
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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