Democracy, Revolution, and Monarchism in Early American Literature

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Cambridge University Press, Aug 15, 2002 - Literary Criticism - 239 pages
Paul 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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Contents

the spell of democracy
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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About the author (2002)

Paul Downes is an Associate Professor in the department of English at the University of Toronto. He is the author of a number of articles on eighteenth and nineteenth century American literature.

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