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
Results 1-5 of 22
Page 4
... rhetorical dimension of all attempts – literary, historical, or political – to establish empirical distinctions and identities. Literary theory insists on a rhetorical supplement atwork in any founding moment and in any founding ...
... rhetorical dimension of all attempts – literary, historical, or political – to establish empirical distinctions and identities. Literary theory insists on a rhetorical supplement atwork in any founding moment and in any founding ...
Page 5
... rhetorical, insistence on the textual instability of any set of grounding antitheses (such as that between monarchism and democracy), but it also participates in a post-modern analysis of the constitutive role played by an antagonist or ...
... rhetorical, insistence on the textual instability of any set of grounding antitheses (such as that between monarchism and democracy), but it also participates in a post-modern analysis of the constitutive role played by an antagonist or ...
Page 8
... rhetorical, and it produces the revolutionary people as the god-like figures who stand outside of, and are not subject to, mortal and historical patterns of temporality and causality. The Declaration of Independence cannot but ...
... rhetorical, and it produces the revolutionary people as the god-like figures who stand outside of, and are not subject to, mortal and historical patterns of temporality and causality. The Declaration of Independence cannot but ...
Page 10
... rhetorically quite extravagant founding process that took place in Annapolis and Philadelphia in and .) That this subject is as crucial to the identity ofthe democratic citizen as the open-air subject of the Bill of ...
... rhetorically quite extravagant founding process that took place in Annapolis and Philadelphia in and .) That this subject is as crucial to the identity ofthe democratic citizen as the open-air subject of the Bill of ...
Page 12
... rhetorical play? To say that Andrew would be able to have a will “after his death” is to indulge in a trope (the legal force of his written words is anthropomorphized as a “will”) that points to an aspect of the law that can hardly be ...
... rhetorical play? To say that Andrew would be able to have a will “after his death” is to indulge in a trope (the legal force of his written words is anthropomorphized as a “will”) that points to an aspect of the law that can hardly be ...
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 |
Other editions - View all
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