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 ix
... suggests that the American Revolution initiated a democra- tization of the monarch's relationship to secrecy , duplicity , arbitrariness , and magisterial madness even as it redistributed the monarch's singular autonomy . The figure of ...
... suggests that the American Revolution initiated a democra- tization of the monarch's relationship to secrecy , duplicity , arbitrariness , and magisterial madness even as it redistributed the monarch's singular autonomy . The figure of ...
Page 2
... suggest that the “ fabulous ” and " chimerical " features of monarchism , as it was condemned in America from as early as 1750 ( when Jonathan Mayhew employed the words I have just quoted ) to the post - revolutionary era , persist in ...
... suggest that the “ fabulous ” and " chimerical " features of monarchism , as it was condemned in America from as early as 1750 ( when Jonathan Mayhew employed the words I have just quoted ) to the post - revolutionary era , persist in ...
Page 3
... suggests , insofar as it binds them to the spell of democracy . To re - mystify the language we use to describe democracy is , for some , to participate in a discourse that has been far more at home in English departments than in ...
... suggests , insofar as it binds them to the spell of democracy . To re - mystify the language we use to describe democracy is , for some , to participate in a discourse that has been far more at home in English departments than in ...
Page 4
... suggest that an ear for poetry makes one a better reader of the Declaration of Independence ( although this may be true ) . Instead , this book finds in literary theory a productive se- ries of reflections on the rhetorical dimension of ...
... suggest that an ear for poetry makes one a better reader of the Declaration of Independence ( although this may be true ) . Instead , this book finds in literary theory a productive se- ries of reflections on the rhetorical dimension of ...
Page 5
... suggests that displaced or translated elements of monarchic political culture can be found at work in key revolutionary ideas and constructs . The citizen , the State , and the founding documents of American democracy emerge from this ...
... suggests that displaced or translated elements of monarchic political culture can be found at work in key revolutionary ideas and constructs . The citizen , the State , and the founding documents of American democracy emerge from this ...
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